Saturday 1 December 2012

The Auckland Psilocybe, King's Psilocybe

Cap: 1.5-5.5 cm broad. Broadly conic, expanding to broadly umbonate, becoming nearly plane in maturity. Margin striate, upturned, irregular, and splitting in age, free of veil remnants. Dark brown to yellowish brown, hygrophanous, drying to pale yellowish brown to straw colored. Flesh white, bruising bluish in age or where injured. Gills: Attachment adnate, grayish yellowish brown, darker, with maturity, Edges whitish. Stem: 35-100 mm long by 1.5-5mm thick, even, pruinose above, covered with whitish, silky fibrils below. Flesh brownish, bruising bluish. Partial veil cortinate, poorly developed, soon disappearing. Microscopic features: Spores dark purplish brown in deposit, ovoid-ellipsoid in side view, ovoid in face view, (6.5) 7-9.5 by 3.5-5.5 u. Basidia 4-spored. Pleurocystidia 13-19 by 4.5-6 u, scattered, similar to cheilocystidia but with a shorter neck, up to 4.5u. Cheilocystidia 15-32 by 4-8 u, ventricose-rostrate, with a long flexuous neck up to 12 u long, often forking. Habit, habitat, and distribution: Common. Grows scattered to gregariously on soil rich in woody debris and litter beneath Leptospermum and dacrydium, and in pine (Pinus radiata) plantations. Reported only around Auckland, New Zealand. Comments: Estimated to be moderately potent. No analyses are known. With the heavy export of lumber and raw logs from the pine plantations of New Zealand, this species has a direct gateway for spreading to many other temperate regions of the world. This species resembles many of the lignicolous Psilocybes. Psilocybe aucklandii Guzman, King, Bandala

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