How To Identify Liberty Cap Mushrooms

It enjoys mounds of dung where it can proliferate. It can be mistaken for psilocybe pelliculosa, which can be a serious mistake. It doesn’t like dung but does like a wet, marshy ground with good, natural fertilizer. Placed on a piece of paper while drying out, it is more than likely a Liberty Cap mushroom.

Psilocybe semilanceata

In culture, grown in a petri dish, the fungus forms a white to pale orange cottony or felt-like mat of mycelia. The cap cuticle is up to 90 μm thick, and is made of a tissue layer called an ixocutis—a gelatinized layer of hyphae lying parallel to the cap surface. The slender yellowish-brown stipe is 4.5–14 cm (1.8–5.5 in) long by 1–3.5 mm (0.04–0.14 in) thick, and usually slightly thicker towards the base. When the cap dries from exposure to the sun, the film turns whitish and is no longer peelable.

The gills of both these species start off pale brown and turn to rust or cinnamon brown as in the third example. The cap is similar in colour to a dry liberty cap (not a wet one) The gills start off grey and turn to purplish-brown with age as spores get released.

Anyone Can Learn To Identify Liberty Caps

Psilocybe, the genus name, means ‘smooth head’ – a reference to the silkily mooth, scaleless surface of caps of these grassland mushrooms. Beginning in the 19th century, this humble little mushroom was starting to be identified by its common name, the liberty cap. In the United Kingdom, psilocybin mushrooms are labeled a class A drug along with LSD. For example, Rhode Island recently moved to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of psilocybin mushrooms, while other states like California and Michigan are currently considering similar.

How To Identify Liberty Caps (And Avoid Lookalikes)

Flicking the cap before harvesting can help disseminate spores, and slicing the mushroom with your fingernail where the stem reaches the soil can help prevent damage to the mycelium beneath. The darker colored, inedible common conecap (Conocybe tenera) can be distinguished from P. semilanceata by the aforementioned features that apply to Conocybe, in addition to its rust-brown spore print. This species is only mildly psychoactive when compared to the more potent liberty cap. In contrast to P. semilanceata, the edge of the gills beneath the cap lie flat along the bottom, perpendicular to the stem. Mature mushrooms of Panaeolus tend to be dark, but opaque and not shiny in appearance (in contrast to P. semilanceata, which is dark and partially transparent when young and moist, becoming lighter in color and more opaque upon drying).

Join 19,000+ receiving a mind-expanding dose of psychedelic insight every Monday. The surface of the stem is smooth but up close you’ll see it’s fibrous. It also becomes opaque so that you can only see the gills towards the bottom (if at all). As the cap dries out, it changes colour starting from the top down (second row) to ivory or cream (third row). It is translucent such that you can see the gills running down the underside as in the first row above. The cap changes colour based on its state of hydration.

Cap Colour

• There are many different types of magic mushrooms aside from the Liberty Cap.
• Some of these little mushrooms do indeed look like spears, although many have wiggly stems uncharacteristic of spear shafts.
• When moist, radial grooves (striations) can be seen on the cap that correspond to the positions of the gills underneath.
• Mordecai Cooke’s 1871 handbook referred to this mushroom as the “cap of liberty,” which can be tied to the cap worn by freed Roman enslaved people.
• His main areas of interest include mental health, mystical experiences, the history of psychedelics, and the philosophy of psychedelics.

Closer examination of spores to assess their size and dimensions will require use of an optical microscope. Examination of spore print coloration should never be relied on as a standalone feature of identification, but rather to supplement other features of identification. Like Panaeolus, the stems of Concocybe tend to be more brittle and prone to breaking when the stems are bent.

Some of the grassland bonnets (Mycena spp.) are similar in appearance and grow in the same grassland habitat and can look similar to liberty caps with age; however their striated cap clearly distinguishes them from P. semilanceata, along with their white spore print and fragile stem. Some of the mottlegills from the genus Panaeolus can look similar to liberty caps but they do not possess a pronounced umbo (a raised area or protrusion in the center of the mushroom cap) or the wavy, curving stem that liberty caps have (having straighter, stick-like stems). Let us now turn our attention to other mushrooms you may come across in the grassland habitat favored by liberty caps that may bear a resemblance to this species. I now turn to some similar-looking mushrooms that grow in the same grassland habitat as liberty caps.

Conocybe Species

In the early 1960s, the Swiss scientist Albert Hofmann—known for the synthesis of the psychedelic drug LSD—chemically analyzed P. semilanceata fruit bodies collected in Switzerland and France by the botanist Roger Heim. According to German mycologist Jochen Gartz, the description of the species is “fully compatible with current knowledge about Psilocybe semilanceata.” It is also known in Australia (where it may be an introduced species) and New Zealand, where it grows in high-altitude grasslands.

Potential side effects of liberty cap mushrooms

Their 1963 publication was the first report of psilocybin in a European mushroom species; previously, it had been known only in Psilocybe species native to Mexico, Asia and North America. The first reliably documented report of Psilocybe semilanceata intoxication involved a British family in 1799, who prepared a meal with mushrooms they had picked in London’s Green Park. When grown in dual culture with other saprobic fungi isolated from the rhizosphere of grasses from its habitat, P. semilanceata significantly suppresses their growth.

Psilocybe semilanceata (Fr.) P. Kumm. – Magic Mushroom or Liberty Cap

• This can lower the effect of the mushroom’s psychedelic properties.
• The gills can range in colour from a pale cream when the mushroom has first sprouted to a deep purple when the mushroom has matured.
• In the United Kingdom, psilocybin mushrooms are labeled a class A drug along with LSD.
• P. semilanceata is much less common in South America, where it has been recorded in Chile.

In the years since, i’ve come to realise the best part of foraging isn’t the free mushrooms. But I felt uncomfortable with buying mushrooms via ethically dubious supply chains. Although many European countries remained open to the use and possession of hallucinogenic mushrooms after the US ban, starting in the 2000s (decade) there has been a tightening of laws and enforcements.

The cap is hygrophanous, meaning it assumes different colors depending on its state of hydration. The cap of P. semilanceata is 5–25 mm (0.20–0.98 in) in diameter and 6–22 mm (0.24–0.87 in) tall. As they explained, conserving the name Psilocybe in this way would prevent nomenclatural changes to a well-known group of fungi, many species of which are “linked to archaeology, anthropology, religion, alternate life styles, forensic science, law enforcement, laws and regulation”. The species was first described by Elias Magnus Fries as Agaricus semilanceatus in his 1838 work Epicrisis Systematis Mycologici. The spores are dark purplish-brown en masse, ellipsoid in shape, and measure 10.5–15 by 6.5–8.5 μm. The gill attachment to the stipe is adnexed (narrowly attached), and they are initially cream-colored before tinting purple to black as the spores mature.

The legality of liberty cap mushrooms is a hot-button issue and one that often causes confusion. Most of the time, liberty cap mushrooms are easy to identify with their bell-shaped pileus or conical cap. The cultivated fruit bodies of liberty caps have an average of 1.12% psilocybin, no psilocin, and .21% baeocystin (a naturally occurring psychoactive compound) (1). You should understand the legal implications of picking liberty cap mushrooms, as such an activity is illegal in much of the world. Hypholoma polytrichi bears a resemblance to P. semilanceata, but it has lighter colored gills (particularly noticeable when comparing the gills of mature caps in both species), and once mature the caps are broad and flat, tending to be wider than they are tall.

P. semilanceata has also been confused with the toxic muscarine-containing species Inocybe geophylla, a whitish mushroom with a silky cap, yellowish-brown to pale grayish gills, and a dull yellowish-brown spore print. The mushroom takes its common name from the Phrygian cap, also known as the “liberty cap”, which it resembles; P. semilanceata shares its common name with P. pelliculosa, a species from which it is more or less indistinguishable in appearance. Psilocybe semilanceata, commonly known as the liberty cap, is a species of fungus which produces the psychoactive compounds psilocybin, psilocin and baeocystin. The first step to identifying liberty cap mushrooms is knowing where and when to look for them. Smaller specimens of liberty caps usually have the highest concentrations of psilocybin. Liberty caps are one of the most potent psilocybin mushrooms that exist.

Conocybe species

The specific epitet semilanceata comes from semi- meaning ‘half’and -lanceata which means ‘spear-shaped’. Fairly frequent in Britain and Ireland, where it is rather localised, Psilocybe semilanceata occurs throughout Europe and is found also in North America. Psilocybe semilanceata, commonly known in the UK as the Magic Mushroom, and in the USA as Liberty Cap, appears in grassland in autumn. And with an understanding of the proper procedures and safety measures, one can indulge in these fascinating fungi without any legal or health risks. It may involve trampling delicate flora in pursuit of specific plant species, leading to soil degradation and damaging nearby wildlife populations. On the other hand, foraging can often lead to harmful practices where individuals take liberty caps gills more than required without considering its impact on local ecosystems.

It takes .2 to .5 grams of dried magic mushrooms to begin to feel the effects of the psilocybin. It is nearly impossible to truly gauge the exact amount of psilocybin you are ingesting when munching on dried magic mushrooms or sipping on Liberty Cap-infused teas. It adores a damp place to grow its delicate stems and caps. The accidental ingestion of psilocybin mushrooms can create lasting psychological effects. The caps come to a pointy head and are chartreuse to brown in coloring. The humble Liberty Cap (Psilocybe semilanceata) is one of the planet’s most potent psilocybin-containing mushroom species.

Liberty Cap mushrooms are so called because of the distinctive hat they wear on their weaving stalks. Of the most potent types of mushrooms found on the floors of wooded areas and in grassy knolls. The gills slope upwards and only attach to the stem right at the top (the attachment is adnexed). The surface is a bit shiny or oily as well as translucent, so you can see the vertical lines of the gills through the cap.