Psilocybin Mushroom Handbook Read online

  Sexual reproduction is the recombination of the genetic material from two parent individuals to form a new one. The container of genetic material donated by each parent is known as a gamete. The gametes of fungi are called spores. A spore is a compact, protected cell, capable of remaining alive but dormant for long periods of time until it finds a suitable home. All of the fungi we will discuss in this book are known as Basidiomycetes, since they produce their spores on basidia, tiny baseball-bat-shaped protuberances lining their gills, the blade-like structures arranged in a radial pattern on the underside of the cap, or pileus.13 The pileus is held aloft on the end of a cylindrical stem, known to mycologists as a stipe.

  Parts of the Mushroom

  Spore Discharge

  Let’s return to our cow patty and its lonely mushroom. Zoom in closer: deep in shadow, millions of microscopic, baseball-bat-shaped basidia stick out from the flat faces of the gills lining the underside of the parasol, and at the wide end of each basidium stand four ovoid, purple-black spores. Each spore is perched like a top upon a tiny horn-shaped protuberance at the outer end of the basidium, known as a sterigma. The air around the gills is moist and much cooler than that around the mushroom, thanks to the wonders of evaporative cooling taking place on the sun-beaten upper face of the cap. As the air cools, water condenses around the spore and its tiny stand, and a droplet begins to form at the place they join. The droplet grows until it can no longer support its own structure, its surface tension breaks, and the water from the droplet spreads out over the body of the spore. The force of this action draws the spore toward the sterigma. The sterigma, being somewhat elastic, collapses slightly beneath the weight of the spore, only to push back with an equal and opposite force and catapult the spore from its perch into the open space beyond the face of the gill.14 The amount of force is precisely calculated to hurtle the spore far enough to clear the surface of its own gill, but not so far that it smacks into the facing one. Instead, it succumbs to gravity and is pulled straight down and out below the bottom face of the mushroom, where with a little luck, it will be carried away by a gust of wind, along with millions of its siblings.

  An electron scanning micrograph of Psilocybe cubensis spores.

  When the wind in our field subsides, two spores from our mushroom have settled onto a patch of grass, where they now wait patiently for something or someone to bring them closer together.

  Fungal Growth

  Now picture a cow, maybe the one who made that same cow patty from the beginning of the chapter. The cow is munching on the grass in our field, because that’s what cows like to do, and sooner or later, she eats the blades of grass upon which sit our lonely spores, munching them down with her lunch. Swallowed whole with the grass, they are swept through her digestive tract only to emerge some time later at the other end. Fortunately, the spores are resilient and well armored, and suffer no ill effects from their wild ride through the cow’s guts. Better than that, for their troubles they find themselves smack in the middle of a pile of their favorite food: cow shit.15 Soon afterward, each of our spores germinates, its cells dividing and slowly growing out into the delectable and nutrient-rich materials in the cow patty.

  Growing fungi consist of networks of hyphae: tubular, filamentous cells that expand and divide at their forward tips, branching occasionally to create fork- or fan-like structures. Masses of hyphae are known collectively as the mycelium of the fungus. To the naked eye, fungal mycelium appears often as white, fuzzy or hair-like growth on the surface of the food source (or substrate), such as you might see on the underside of an upturned log. Most fungi spend the majority of their days as an undifferentiated mycelium, only occasionally forming specialized, complex structures such as mushrooms.

  Hyphal growth is also invasive, meaning it occurs within and often throughout the substrate. Digestive enzymes secreted from the tips of the advancing mycelium into their surroundings degrade the substrate into simpler organic molecules, to be absorbed or engulfed by the mycelium as it marches along. In effect, fungi do their digesting on the outside. While we tend to process our meals in the privacy of our own insides, fungi prefer to eat out.

  All of the fungi we discuss in this book are saprophytes, or saprobes, meaning that they derive their nutrition from non-living organic matter, in this case dead or decaying plants. This is in contrast to parasitic fungi, which colonize and digest living organisms, often killing their host in the end, and mycorrhizal fungi, which live in a symbiotic relationship with their plant hosts.16

  Fungal Sex, Part One: Mating

  So our spores, now grown into two individual mycelial colonies, continue to explore the cow pie, slowly penetrating and absorbing its contents, while blindly reaching out for one another. Eventually, their colonies of mycelium touch, and at last our two lovers meet. However, all of their good fortune thus far is no guarantee they will decide to tie the knot, since fungi are just as picky as we humans when it comes to whom they choose as mates. In order to minimize inbreeding and to promote genetic diversity, fungi produce spores of multiple mating types. Mating types are roughly equivalent to our two sexes, except that with fungi the number of different “genders” can be anywhere from two to many thousands!17 In order for two strains of monokaryotic fungi to mate, they must be of different mating types. Fortunately for our lovers (and for our story) they are quite compatible, and it is nothing less than love at first sight.

  Life Cycle of Psilocybe cubensis

  Up to this point, the cells of each individual mycelium have been monokaryotic: their cells contain but one haploid nucleus, with only half the genetic material of a mature fungus. Monokaryotic mycelium, being immature, is thin and wispy in appearance, and slow growing. When the two colonies fuse, they produce a mycelium composed of cells containing two nuclei, known as dikaryotic mycelium. Dikaryotization is a state unique to most Basidiomycetes, where the cells from two compatible gametes join together into one cell type, but their individual nuclei remain separate. Unlike the cells in your body and those in most other higher organisms, each of which contain a single diploid18 nucleus, Basidiomycetes live most of their days with two nuclei per cell, one from each “parent” monokaryotic mycelium. The only time Basidiomycetes combine all of their genetic material into a diploid nucleus is during a single, brief moment inside of each basidium, just before spores are generated. In a sense, these fungi start the sex act near the very beginning of life, only to finish it much later, living their lives in what amounts to a continuous act of foreplay.

  Finally, our two lovers are combined together into a single organism, a mature fungus, and now that our fungus is mature, it can do what mature fungi love to do: eat. The fungus invades the substrate of the cow patty with dense, ropy strands of mycelium. It will continue to do so until the food source is exhausted of available nutrition, or some other environmental shift induces it to produce mushrooms, or fruit.

  Fungal Sex, Part Two: Fruiting

  All that remains now to bring us back full circle to where we began is for our fungus to produce mushrooms, bearing a new generation of spores. Exactly why and when fungi decide to form mushrooms remains somewhat of a mystery, and reasons vary greatly among species. Some do so because of a change in the weather, such as a heavy rain, an increase or decrease in temperature, or both in combination. Others produce fruit only after the substrate has been fully colonized and its available nutrients exhausted. In all of these cases, the fungus is likely provoked into reproducing by the increasing probability of its own demise. Still other species wait years to fruit, only doing so after some subtle environmental change has occurred. Fortunately for us, Psilocybe cubensis is a promiscuous species and does not need much encouragement. Robust P. cubensis strains will fruit readily and abundantly under a wide variety of environmental conditions.

  Many fungi, Psilocybes included, want to ensure the vertical orientation of their caps in order to maximize the elevation and efficiency of spore release. For this reason, they fruit at the upper surf
aces of the substrate, using sunlight as a trigger. Once the mycelium of our fungus has reached the upper layers of the cow patty, tiny knots of intertwined hyphae form at numerous places on its exposed surface. Soon thereafter, these hyphal knots develop into primordia (singular, primordium), also referred to as pins or pinheads: miniaturized, complete versions of the full-sized mushrooms they will eventually become. It is at the pinning stage that the fungus first begins to truly differentiate and form a variety of unique cell types. The upper surfaces of the tiny caps darken, while inside the primordium the cells that will comprise the cap, stipe, gills, and veil divide and orient themselves appropriately. Their nuclei divide and accumulate, while walls (or septa) form around them, creating a dense matrix of compacted cells. A mature primordium contains all of the cells that will be present in the fully-grown mushroom; all that remains for it to do is to take up water and expand.When it does, it happens rapidly, literally exploding into being.19

  The annulus of this P. cubensis fruitbody is coated with a dark deposit of spores.

  In a rapid surge of growth, the familiar features of the mushroom begin to take shape.The stipe elongates, the spherical cap expands and then begins to flatten, exposing the partial veil, a thin membrane that serves to protect the fragile, developing gills. When the gills are fully formed, the cap expands. This causes the veil to pull away from the outside of the cap.Veil remnants often remain attached to the stem, hanging loosely like a tiny skirt, known collectively as an annulus.

  The elongating mushrooms use light, air currents, and gravity to orient their caps as vertically as possible, ensuring optimal spore release once the gills open. On the vertical faces of the gills, in a dense layer of cells known as the hymenium, millions of basidia are forming. Once the basidium reaches maturity, its haploid nuclei fuse to form a single diploid nucleus, and the sex act that began when our two spores first met is finally complete.

  This phase is short-lived, however, since this nucleus rapidly divides, shuffling its contents to form four genetically unique, daughter haploid nuclei. These nuclei migrate into the stergimata, where they are encased and deposited as spores at the end of the basidium.There they wait for their moment to fly, and for our story to begin once again.

  The Biology of Mushroom Cultivation

  Hopefully by now you have a sense of how most Basidiomycete fungi behave in a natural setting, and should have no trouble understanding how such mushrooms are artificially grown.While the context has changed, the biology remains the same. Nature leaves much up to chance, improving her likelihood of success by virtue of great numbers: many fruits, millions of spores per fruit, and perhaps hundreds or thousands of strains per generation, some small percentage of which will thrive. The cultivator, on the other hand, succeeds at each stage of the process by carefully selecting only the best candidates for further advancement, and by working within a controlled (sterile) environment.

  Mushroom cultivation proceeds through three basic phases, regardless of the species of fungus: germination or isolation, expansion, and finally fruiting. The first stage involves isolating a mushroom culture from spores or from the tissue of a living mushroom. Spores germinated on nutrified agar in Petri dishes result (after mating) in a diversity of strains within the same culture, while tissue culture results in a genetically identical clone of the parent mushroom. In either case, the growth of the fungus in the medium gives rise to a dikaryotic mycelium.The use of a semi-solid agar medium allows the cultivator to easily examine the culture for desired characteristics and to identify contamination, if present. The mycelium can be propagated on agar more or less indefinitely and can be stored at this stage at cold temperatures for later retrieval.

  Once a suitable clean culture has been isolated, the mycelium is then transferred to a secondary medium, usually sterilized whole grain in quart-sized mason jars. The purpose of this stage is to expand the volume of mycelium (the mycelial mass) to an amount that will support the desired amount of fruiting in the final phase. A small amount of mycelium on a wedge of agar is removed from a plate and placed on the grain.The mycelium grows from the agar onto the grain.The jars of grain are shaken every few days to facilitate colonization. When the grain is fully colonized, they are then used to inoculate larger containers of grain (usually in sterilizable plastic bags, though larger mason jars will also work), to further expand the mycelial mass. The material generated in this phase is generally known as spawn.

  Once a suitable amount of spawn has been generated, it is used to inoculate a final substrate, otherwise known as the fruiting substrate.The exact constituents of the fruiting substrate depend on the species in question. Some species will fruit from a variety of substrates, while others are much more particular. Psilocybe cubensis, for example, will fruit from wheat straw, cow manure, or even from grain itself, while Psilocybe azurescens and other wood-loving species will fruit only from a bed of hardwood chips. Once a suitable medium has been prepared (sterilization is usually unnecessary at this stage, though sometimes the substrate is pasteurized), it is mixed with spawn and left to colonize. After the fruiting substrate is colonized, fruiting is initiated. Once again, conditions for initiation are species specific, but generally involve the covering of the substrate with a layer of moisture-retaining, non-nutritive material such as peat moss (known as a casing layer) and/or modifying the temperature, humidity, air exchange, and light levels at the fruiting surface to create conditions that favor mushroom formation. Eventually, if all goes according to plan, mushrooms form, first appearing as primordia, then enlarging to full size within a few days, at which point they begin to release their spores, and the cultivation cycle is complete.

  Cultivation Flowchart

  3

  PSILOCYBE: THE SPECIES

  There are some thirty thousand documented species of mushroom-producing fungi worldwide. Of these, approximately one hundred species or varieties are known to contain psilocybin or related compounds. Most of these are found within the genera Psilocybe and Panaeolus, with a few appearing elsewhere in Inocybe, Conocybe, Gymnopilus, and others. Of course, not every species in these genera contain psilocybin, and even those that do may only produce it in trace amounts.

  In this book, we present methods for the cultivation of two types of psilocybin mushrooms: the coprophilic (or dung-inhabiting) species Psilocybe cubensis, and the complex of interrelated lignicolous (wood-inhabiting) species such as Psilocybe azurescens and P. cyanescens. We chose to focus on these particular species for several important reasons: they produce psilocybin in relatively high quantities, they have a long history of cultivation, and they fruit reliably under easily reproducible conditions. In addition, they offer the possibilities of indoor (with P. cubensis) and outdoor cultivation (with any of the species in the P. azurescens complex). While there are certainly other well-known species that also meet these criteria, the two types we have chosen should produce ample quantities of psilocybin for any diligent grower.

  The aim of this chapter is to familiarize you with these species, including their natural habitat, distribution, and behavior, so that you understand their basic biology as you begin work with them. This book is not meant to be a “field guide” and does not prepare you to find and collect these species from the wild. Foraging for mushrooms, whether for food or for psilocybin, requires a great deal of knowledge and skill. Being poisoned as a result of misidentification is a real and potentially lethal risk. If you are interested in collecting your own mushrooms, we suggest you closely familiarize yourself with at least several good field guides (we have listed several excellent guides to North American fungi in appendix C) and consult directly with experts who already know the fungi of your area. Chances are you have a local mycological society or club where there are people who can teach you what you need to know in order to identify mushrooms from the wild.

  For further reading about the many psilocybin-containing mushrooms found worldwide, Paul Stamets’ Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World is currently the most c
omprehensive text on the subject, and is an essential addition to any mycology library.

  Psilocybe cubensis

  Psilocybe cubensis is the most widely cultivated species of psychoactive mushrooms, for both historical and biological reasons. Worldwide, it is one of the most common psilocybin containing species found in the wild, and therefore among the most commonly consumed and most well known. It is also one of the easiest to cultivate, since it fruits on a wide range of substrates, and under a variety of environmental conditions. Though in the wild it grows exclusively on dung, under cultivation it will fruit from just about any substrate sufficiently high in carbon and nitrogen: cereal straws, grains, grasses, corn, even from wood, paper, or cardboard, if supplemented with some form of protein. Most mushroom species are quite finicky in their growth and fruiting requirements, but not P. cubensis. This fact, combined with its ample potency, makes it one of the best species for the novice cultivator to grow.

  Psilocybe cubensis fruiting from a tray of cased wheat berries.

  We begin with Psilocybe cubensis because it is both the easiest to grow and the species of psilocybin-containing mushroom with which people are most familiar. Its fast growing, deeply rhizomorphic mycelia, abundant primordia, large, robust fruits, and prolific spore production combine to make it among the most prototypical of Basidiomycetes. Once you have worked with P. cubensis for a while and have grown familiar with the mushroom life cycle, you will be ready to work with species that behave in more subtle ways.