Psilocybe weraroa

Borov., Obornik & Noordel

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Psilocybe weraroa **

Borov., Obornik & Noordel

Pronunciation
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Inski

Wiki

Michael W. Michael W. Noah Siegel Haunted Haunted

Peridium:
(1)3%u2013 5 cm tall, 1.5%u2013 3 cm wide, irregularly roundish to ovate, elliptical or even depressed-globose, margin folded, light brown when young becoming pale blue-grey, often showing blue or blue-green stains with age, at first finely fibrillose becoming smooth, glabrous, slightly viscid, bruising blue when injured, slowly. Drying dingy brown.

Gleba:
Chocolate or sepia-brown, sparse, chambered, contorted gill-like structures.

Stipe (stem):
Up to 4 cm tall, 6 mm thick, equal, cartilaginous, whitish to blue-grey, yellowish-brown at the base, hollow, bruising blue when injured.

Microscopic features:
Spores: 11%u201315(17) x 5%u20138 um in size, smooth, sepia-coloured, elliptic-ovate or elliptical in shape, rounded at one end with a thin epispore.

Season:
It is fairly abundant in the early winter and spring months.

Habitat and Distribution:
Growing on decaying wood buried in forest leaf litter, often on the rotting branches of Melicytus ramiflorus. It has also been found fruiting on rotted cabbage trees and is often associated with decaying fern fronds, native to the forests of New Zealand, typically South of Wanganui in the North Island. It is fairly abundant in the early winter and spring months in lowland mixed rain-forest near Wellington. The pouch fungus has been found in winter in Central Hawkes Bay where they tend to be found around fallen pine cones - not in pine forests but in areas where pines are interspersed by other kinds of trees. They are also found on the south island. The mushroom is sometimes hard to see because its usually hidden under dried leaves. It is often eaten by slugs and sometimes hard to find specimens that haven't been nibbled on.

Piha MO Occurrence Map

Growth Habit:
Psilocybe weraroa is found growing solitary to gregarious

Bruising:
Bruising where handled.

Dosage:
N/A

Other Notes:
Weraroa virescens is often mistaken for P. weraroa since they are both naturally pale bluish, however, unlike P. weraroa, W. virescens does not stain blue. The sepia color of the gleba also serves to separate P. weraroa from similar species in the genus Weraroa.
Psilocybe weraroa is psychoactive. Psilocin and psilocybin are the chemical components considered to be responsible for its effects, as with other blue-staining fungi of the genus Psilocybe.

Links:
psilocybe weraroa -MushroomObserver

Compiled and Edited By: Joust

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