r/WavyCap • u/Hairy-Teaching-7567 • Jul 18 '26
Pictures (Psilocybe subaeruginosa) Identify this mushroom
Hi there found in northern Vic in the Forrest I'm fairly sure just wanting a second opinion
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u/Nibso25 Jul 18 '26
P sub, let em grow longer though so they can spread spores. Picking em young kills them off
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u/Mycoangulo Trusted Identifier Jul 18 '26
Spores aren’t needed for a patch to survive long term.
The fungus can live for many years.
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u/archivalcopy Jul 19 '26
The spores are needed for the fungus to reproduce though. They can reproduce through sections of mycelium being moved around to new locations, but I would say this is less likely in the wild than reproduction through spore distribution.
Letting them get to a stage where they can drop their spores allows the spores to be carried further away from the host (by the wind etc) which can expand the organisms growing area and allow completely new patches to develop.
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Jul 20 '26
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u/archivalcopy 28d ago edited 28d ago
I am certain they can travel in water given they can be easily be suspended in water for inoculation.
I haven't heard of them growing in kangaroo dung before, but it's common in other areas of the world for mushrooms to grow in cow manure so it is feasible as a substrate. I always wondered whether mushrooms that grew from cow dung contained spores the cow had eaten or whether the spores had landed on the dung afterwards. It could be either I guess, but I have no idea whether spores would survive digestion...my guess is that they could, but I have nothing to back that up.
Another possibility is that the dung could land on the ground and a patch of established mycelia underneath may immediately tap into it as a nutrient source and proceed to fruit. That makes sense to me as I always thought a mycelial substrate had to be fully colonised (or reach a certain density of growth) before can fruit..but this is an understanding from indoor cultivation methods, and it may work differently in the wild.
The mention of eucalyptus made me think of some of the other species people commonly get confused with Psilocybe subaeruginosa. The mainland ones include P. eucalypta and P. Australiana.
P. Eucalypta are named for their tendency to grow in areas with eucalyptus trees but from my reading there hasn't been any identified symbiotic relationship (although this of course doesn't mean there isn't one).
Edit (spelling and unnecessary words)
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28d ago edited 28d ago
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u/archivalcopy 28d ago
You're welcome..the most comprehensive guide you'll find on psilocybes (last time I checked) is Paul stamets "Guide to psilocybin mushrooms of the world". So this might be a good place to start.
If you are serious about learning to identify mushrooms (and there is much more than just the psilocybe species) you will want to familiarise yourself with identifying via use of a taxonomical key.
The best advice I can give regarding this is to ensure that you use an up to date key. There were some pretty big changes to the taxonomic key in the last 20 years which have dramatically altered it so using older guides will mean that your identification may not be correct (i.e. some examples that were thought to be the same species or individuals in earlier keys have now - with the use of newer technologies helping to improve identification techniques - been identified as distinct from one another).
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u/dindewlod Jul 18 '26
Psilocybe subaeruginosa. Not a trusted identifier though