16 ms·

Show HN: Magic Mushroom Map

171 points by pbaumel 5y ago

pbaumel 5y ago
Hi HN, Liberty caps - or Psilocybe semilanceata - are a psilocybin-containing mushroom that grow naturally in many parts of the world. There is a lot of information online about where and when to look for liberty caps, but I wanted to see if data could help answer this question and boost people's chances of being in the right place at the right time. To summarise how the map works: first, I matched the dates and coordinates of historical liberty cap growth records with data on habitat (e.g. land cover, elevation, soil acidity) and weather (e.g. temperature, rainfall). Second, I used this dataset to train a model describing the conditions in which liberty caps are more or less likely to thrive (for the statistically-inclined: kernel density estimation with model selection by maximum likelihood cross-validation). Finally, this model is used to make live predictions of the likelihood of liberty cap growth across the world on any given day. For now, the map is limited to parts of Europe and North America (PNW + east coast of Canada) where liberty caps are known to grow. I used the following data: - Weather: ERA5 by ECMWF (historical) [1], GFS by NCEP (forecast) [2] - Land cover: Corine Land Cover by Copernicus (Europe) [3], Land Cover by NALCMS (North America) [4] - Soil acidity: SoilGrids by ISRIC [5] - Elevation: SRTM by CGIAR [6] - Growth records: Psilocybe Semilanceata by NBNAtlas [7] [1] https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5 https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datas... [2] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/global-forcast-system-gfs https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datas... [3] https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover [4] http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/land-cover-30m-2015-landsat-and-rapideye/ http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/land-c... [5] https://www.isric.org/explore/soilgrids https://www.isric.org/explore/soilgrids [6] https://bigdata.cgiar.org/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-database/ https://bigdata.cgiar.org/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-databas... [7] https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551
- voisin 5y ago
  Very cool! Is it true that they are this rare in North America? Only a small part of the Pacific Northwest and the east coast of Canada?
  - pbaumel 5y ago
    For liberty caps, yeah. There are some rare reports from other states in the US (mostly east coast) but I don't want to give people false hope by including those states in the map. However, there are many other species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in North America. You can check out the Shroomery for more info on species in your area [1] [1] https://shroomery.org/12257/Mushroom-Locations https://shroomery.org/12257/Mushroom-Locations
    - Uberphallus 5y ago
      Wow, it's been ages since I've seen the shroomery.org domain. What a throwback.
- hutzlibu 5y ago
  I was wondering, if there is a reason, that britain has lots of areas with high propability and the mainland has not, but then I saw that the growth records [7] indeed only cover the british islands. So I suppose the data on the map is not really accurate as of now? Otherwise what I would have expect from such a site, would be of course also detailed informations on how the mushrooms look exactly and where to look for them specifically. (And also a warning, that if you pick the wrong ones, you die a horrible death and even if you pick the right one, but are in the wrong mentally conditions, your are into horror either) Anyway, your project is nice and your map inspired me to have a look in my area and see, if it matches your data.
  - pbaumel 5y ago
    The differences in the amount of areas across countries is mainly to do with differences in the amount of suitable grassland. For instance, in countries where lots of grassland has been turned into cropland there are fewer areas. In countries where grassland is dominated by, for instance, pastures there will be more areas. Thanks for your feedback; i've been thinking of adding a field guide on identification. Also good luck hunting!
    - jamal-kumar 5y ago
      I think what you're doing is cool but maybe it would be a pretty essential feature to add an overlay map of distribution of lookalike species to preserve the health, safety and wellness of the users of your website. Pholiotina rugosa has been spotted growing amoungst liberty caps, which contains some of the same deadly toxins in amanita species, as well as maybe others out there I'm not remembering offhand which could be mistaken (It's quite cosmopolitan in distribution in the northern hemisphere).
- db39 5y ago
  I found this map + twitter towards the end of last year (after the season had ended), so I'm looking forward to exploring in a few months to see how accurate it is. I don't have much more to say - I just like niche mapping projects like this. Congrats on launching the new features + new areas!
  - pbaumel 5y ago
    Thank you, and good luck out there!
- MattBlissett 5y ago
  > [7] https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 With data from GBIF you would have almost all of the British records published on the NBN Atlas (about 100 are not shared), plus 2,300 more from other sources. → https://www.gbif.org/species/5242507 https://www.gbif.org/species/5242507
  - pbaumel 5y ago
    Thank you for sharing! I'll look into this source in more detail.
toastal 5y ago
I can appreciate that this site is using Mapbox and Plausible instead of giving out user data to Google
- chippy 5y ago
  the basemap is from Carto, which uses a range of sources including OpenStreetMap and is missing required attribution: https://carto.com/attribution/ https://carto.com/attribution/ https://carto.com/help/working-with-data/attribution/#basemaps https://carto.com/help/working-with-data/attribution/#basema...
  - habi 5y ago
    I sent the MMM guys/gals an email according to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lacking_proper_attribution/Example_email https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lacking_proper_attributi...
Freak_NL 5y ago
Isn't mushroom picking something that requires rather more than a modicum of research upfront before any layman should attempt to do so because of the existence of poisonous mushrooms? I mean, this feels eerily reminiscent of Google sending people up to the summit of Ben Nevis across dangerous terrain via a naive line connecting it to the geographically nearest car park. This website does not seem to give any warnings about the risks involved; are there none? Although perhaps smoking (which I guess is what you do with these) may not kill you as much as eating a poisonous mushroom.
- celticninja 5y ago
  They should be eaten not smoked. Yes you should do your research first. I would be pretty surprised if someone using this to find these mushrooms had not done some research first.
- bobmaxup 5y ago
  I mean, this is considered a poisonous mushroom to most people.
- pbaumel 5y ago
  You're absolutely right, nobody should eat any mushroom if they are at all uncertain about its identity. For now i've focused on where and when to look and steered clear of what to look for, partially due to liability concerns. So, right now, the map is mainly useful for people who already know what they are looking for (or are willing to do the research) rather than complete beginners. I may add a 'field guide' on identification with all the caveats in the near future though.
  - sheepdestroyer 5y ago
    In France, pharmacists are trained and obligated by law to provide free mushroom identification to anyone. For this purpose, every pharmacy owns of very complete mushroom encyclopedias. I had good results in asking psilocibes IDing, but of course got some weird looks and strong recommendations not to consume them. Nobody called the cops.
- 5y ago
rplnt 5y ago
I don't feel like this could help you find the mushrooms. More like it can predict when they will grow in the places you know they could grow at? Would love to see an animation over time after season. Or perhaps you could do that on older data? To see how it differs across location, whether there are more peaks, etc...
- pbaumel 5y ago
  You can see some animations of the 2018 and 2019 seasons in the UK here: https://twitter.com/MushroomMap/status/1301047935203979264 https://twitter.com/MushroomMap/status/1301047935203979264
serjester 5y ago
Neat. I’d recommend looking into a hexagonal coordinate system. It has the benefit of each block being equidistant from its neighbors and clustering is a breeze. It also looks better. There’s a couple open source libraries Uber has that make it a breeze to work with.
- nxpnsv 5y ago
  Also all squares are the same screen size not taking projection distortion into account...
- pbaumel 5y ago
  Thanks for the tip - i'll look into this.
unfunco 5y ago
Do recent weather conditions matter? I always thought they were seasonal, we'd head up to a known spot where they grow in Wales shortly after the first dew of the year (Sept/Oct usually)
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- lm28469 5y ago
  Depends where you live. In relatively dry areas they'll grow like crazy after a few days of rain. If you live in an already humid areas it would be less noticeable I guess.
robinduckett 5y ago
So I checked the mountain and field local to me where they grow every year without fail and it was only a "medium" likelihood :)
- pbaumel 5y ago
  I'm not sure where you're located, but for most places it's a bit early in the season. I'd expect that location to shoot up to high likelihood through Sept-Oct.
ClearAndPresent 5y ago
Enjoy the map. Don't die. https://fungiflora.com/2017/10/16/psilocybe-semilanceata-lookalikes/ https://fungiflora.com/2017/10/16/psilocybe-semilanceata-loo...
cunidev 5y ago
Would this be feasible for normal (edible) mushroom species as well? Some expensive (and delicious) varieties are quite rare, and a map using data like this could help perhaps.
- Alex3917 5y ago
  > Would this be feasible for normal (edible) mushroom species as well? It's possible, and would be useful, but generally not to the same extent. Many species of magic mushrooms have extremely precise weather triggers, whereas for most other species it's more like "go outside the 3rd week of July and look next to beech trees."
Aboh33 5y ago
I just read about a harpsichordist who died eating mushrooms he thought were edible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Schobert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Schobert
- jugg1es 5y ago
  Funny item in his wikipedia entry that Schobert was offended when Mozart's dad said his kids could play his music with ease.
anm89 5y ago
As someone who forages mushrooms pretty extensively my advice is not to forage psychedelic mushrooms as a beginner. Most psilocybin mushrooms fall into the colloquial category of "LBMs" (little brown mushrooms) and the advice is almost always not to forage LBMs because there a million of them, they all look alike, and you might not know from region to region what the risk of look a likes are. ' So unless you have a region specific guidebook, and can make an absolutely positive identification (which probably involves identifying spores from a print under a microscope for LBMs), you really should not forage LBMs or any mushrooms for that fact. In some cases you might also need to know how to safely taste or smell the mushrooms and then know what you are tasting or smelling for. No beginner is going to be able to do any of that. Let someone else grow them from a verified strain from a syringe. It's much safer. As an aside, mushroom foraging is very beginner friendly as long as you stick to the right categories. Things like Chicken of The Woods, oysters, and maitakke are very easy to positively identify and don't have many look alikes in most parts of the US. The often propogated idea that mushroom foraging is only for safe for trained experts is totally untrue. The average person can safely forage for mushrooms. Just buy a region specific guidebook, and stick to the categories that your book tells you are safe for your region.
- ricardo81 5y ago
  Sounds like sensible advice. I've been led to believe the psilocybin ones have blue stalks which can distinguish them from others, but wouldn't pass that on as advice, myself.
  - a2tech 5y ago
    Thats one of the helpful identifiers but not the end of the story. Its a useful puzzle piece
  - anm89 5y ago
    It is true that afaik, every pislocybe species bruises blue, the problem is, could it bruise blue, contain psilocybin, but also be poisonous. I think the truth is that it is pretty rare for that to be the case or may even be non existent but I'd definitely want to get verification on that for my specific region before harvesting anything. Also, as a general point, it is a myth that bruising blue always indicates the presence of psilocybin. For instance, many boletes bruise blue and don't contain any psilocybin. Here's a picture of an intensely blue staining bolete that does not have psilocybin: https://i.redd.it/waumic0mjh921.jpg https://i.redd.it/waumic0mjh921.jpg
pelasaco 5y ago
Strange that none was found in Brazil. I remember in the region of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (mostly Mountain Regions), after a nightly dew over the pastures, you could always find some magic Mushrooms, early in the morning.
- wombatmobile 5y ago
  None are charted for most countries of the world. The data for the site is only from a few countries, primarily the UK. > Growth records: Psilocybe Semilanceata by NBNAtlas (subset shared under CC-BY) https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551
gadders 5y ago
Reminds me of what Terry Pratchett said "All mushrooms are edible, but some are only edible once."
mellavora 5y ago
Am I the only one who finds the map difficult to read? The place-names and borders are almost invisible. Also, pet peeve of mine with most maps-- when I zoom in so that I can see place names, the font gets smaller.
detritus 5y ago
I thought liberty caps needed a cold shock to get them fruiting, which is why we don't see them until Mid-late Autumn? Yet here it's suggesting now is a good time to pick across broad swathes of the North of England - when it's incredibly hot here in Blighty?
sequence7 5y ago
It's worth pointing out that if you're in the UK, for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone, magic mushrooms are very illegal. Courtesy of the Basement Project [1]: * The 2005 Drugs Act amended the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to clarify that both fresh and prepared (e.g. dried or stewed) magic mushrooms that contain psilocin or psilocybin (such as the ‘liberty cap’) are Class A drugs. This means it’s illegal to have this type of ‘magic mushrooms’ for yourself, to give away or to sell * Possession is illegal and can get you up to seven years in jail and/or an unlimited fine. * Supplying someone else, even your friends, can get you up to life imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. [1] https://thebasementproject.org.uk/guidance-addiction/guidance-on-drugs/drugs/drugs-magic-mushrooms/#tab-id-7 https://thebasementproject.org.uk/guidance-addiction/guidanc...
- pmoriarty 5y ago
  I'd be curious to read some reliable statistics on how many people in the UK (and the US) actually get arrested for picking wild psilocybin mushrooms.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
peanut_worm 5y ago
My county has its own species apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_tampanensis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_tampanensis
sergiomattei 5y ago
TIL there's a psylocibin strain native to Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, apparently it's very potent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_guilartensis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_guilartensis
joshtam 5y ago
How do these mushrooms affect your liver? I suppose if not chosen right they can demolish it, right?

171 points by pbaumel 5y ago

Hi HN, Liberty caps - or Psilocybe semilanceata - are a psilocybin-containing mushroom that grow naturally in many parts of the world. There is a lot of information online about where and when to look for liberty caps, but I wanted to see if data could help answer this question and boost people's chances of being in the right place at the right time. To summarise how the map works: first, I matched the dates and coordinates of historical liberty cap growth records with data on habitat (e.g. land cover, elevation, soil acidity) and weather (e.g. temperature, rainfall). Second, I used this dataset to train a model describing the conditions in which liberty caps are more or less likely to thrive (for the statistically-inclined: kernel density estimation with model selection by maximum likelihood cross-validation). Finally, this model is used to make live predictions of the likelihood of liberty cap growth across the world on any given day. For now, the map is limited to parts of Europe and North America (PNW + east coast of Canada) where liberty caps are known to grow. I used the following data: - Weather: ERA5 by ECMWF (historical) [1], GFS by NCEP (forecast) [2] - Land cover: Corine Land Cover by Copernicus (Europe) [3], Land Cover by NALCMS (North America) [4] - Soil acidity: SoilGrids by ISRIC [5] - Elevation: SRTM by CGIAR [6] - Growth records: Psilocybe Semilanceata by NBNAtlas [7] [1] https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datasets/era5 https://www.ecmwf.int/en/forecasts/datasets/reanalysis-datas... [2] https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datasets/global-forcast-system-gfs https://www.ncdc.noaa.gov/data-access/model-data/model-datas... [3] https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover https://land.copernicus.eu/pan-european/corine-land-cover [4] http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/land-cover-30m-2015-landsat-and-rapideye/ http://www.cec.org/north-american-environmental-atlas/land-c... [5] https://www.isric.org/explore/soilgrids https://www.isric.org/explore/soilgrids [6] https://bigdata.cgiar.org/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-database/ https://bigdata.cgiar.org/srtm-90m-digital-elevation-databas... [7] https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551

voisin 5y ago
Very cool! Is it true that they are this rare in North America? Only a small part of the Pacific Northwest and the east coast of Canada?
- pbaumel 5y ago
  For liberty caps, yeah. There are some rare reports from other states in the US (mostly east coast) but I don't want to give people false hope by including those states in the map. However, there are many other species of psilocybin-containing mushrooms in North America. You can check out the Shroomery for more info on species in your area [1] [1] https://shroomery.org/12257/Mushroom-Locations https://shroomery.org/12257/Mushroom-Locations
  - Uberphallus 5y ago
    Wow, it's been ages since I've seen the shroomery.org domain. What a throwback.
hutzlibu 5y ago
I was wondering, if there is a reason, that britain has lots of areas with high propability and the mainland has not, but then I saw that the growth records [7] indeed only cover the british islands. So I suppose the data on the map is not really accurate as of now? Otherwise what I would have expect from such a site, would be of course also detailed informations on how the mushrooms look exactly and where to look for them specifically. (And also a warning, that if you pick the wrong ones, you die a horrible death and even if you pick the right one, but are in the wrong mentally conditions, your are into horror either) Anyway, your project is nice and your map inspired me to have a look in my area and see, if it matches your data.
- pbaumel 5y ago
  The differences in the amount of areas across countries is mainly to do with differences in the amount of suitable grassland. For instance, in countries where lots of grassland has been turned into cropland there are fewer areas. In countries where grassland is dominated by, for instance, pastures there will be more areas. Thanks for your feedback; i've been thinking of adding a field guide on identification. Also good luck hunting!
  - jamal-kumar 5y ago
    I think what you're doing is cool but maybe it would be a pretty essential feature to add an overlay map of distribution of lookalike species to preserve the health, safety and wellness of the users of your website. Pholiotina rugosa has been spotted growing amoungst liberty caps, which contains some of the same deadly toxins in amanita species, as well as maybe others out there I'm not remembering offhand which could be mistaken (It's quite cosmopolitan in distribution in the northern hemisphere).
db39 5y ago
I found this map + twitter towards the end of last year (after the season had ended), so I'm looking forward to exploring in a few months to see how accurate it is. I don't have much more to say - I just like niche mapping projects like this. Congrats on launching the new features + new areas!
- pbaumel 5y ago
  Thank you, and good luck out there!
MattBlissett 5y ago
> [7] https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 With data from GBIF you would have almost all of the British records published on the NBN Atlas (about 100 are not shared), plus 2,300 more from other sources. → https://www.gbif.org/species/5242507 https://www.gbif.org/species/5242507
- pbaumel 5y ago
  Thank you for sharing! I'll look into this source in more detail.

toastal 5y ago

I can appreciate that this site is using Mapbox and Plausible instead of giving out user data to Google

chippy 5y ago
the basemap is from Carto, which uses a range of sources including OpenStreetMap and is missing required attribution: https://carto.com/attribution/ https://carto.com/attribution/ https://carto.com/help/working-with-data/attribution/#basemaps https://carto.com/help/working-with-data/attribution/#basema...
- habi 5y ago
  I sent the MMM guys/gals an email according to https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lacking_proper_attribution/Example_email https://wiki.openstreetmap.org/wiki/Lacking_proper_attributi...

Freak_NL 5y ago

Isn't mushroom picking something that requires rather more than a modicum of research upfront before any layman should attempt to do so because of the existence of poisonous mushrooms? I mean, this feels eerily reminiscent of Google sending people up to the summit of Ben Nevis across dangerous terrain via a naive line connecting it to the geographically nearest car park. This website does not seem to give any warnings about the risks involved; are there none? Although perhaps smoking (which I guess is what you do with these) may not kill you as much as eating a poisonous mushroom.

celticninja 5y ago
They should be eaten not smoked. Yes you should do your research first. I would be pretty surprised if someone using this to find these mushrooms had not done some research first.
bobmaxup 5y ago
I mean, this is considered a poisonous mushroom to most people.
pbaumel 5y ago
You're absolutely right, nobody should eat any mushroom if they are at all uncertain about its identity. For now i've focused on where and when to look and steered clear of what to look for, partially due to liability concerns. So, right now, the map is mainly useful for people who already know what they are looking for (or are willing to do the research) rather than complete beginners. I may add a 'field guide' on identification with all the caveats in the near future though.
- sheepdestroyer 5y ago
  In France, pharmacists are trained and obligated by law to provide free mushroom identification to anyone. For this purpose, every pharmacy owns of very complete mushroom encyclopedias. I had good results in asking psilocibes IDing, but of course got some weird looks and strong recommendations not to consume them. Nobody called the cops.
5y ago

rplnt 5y ago

I don't feel like this could help you find the mushrooms. More like it can predict when they will grow in the places you know they could grow at? Would love to see an animation over time after season. Or perhaps you could do that on older data? To see how it differs across location, whether there are more peaks, etc...

pbaumel 5y ago
You can see some animations of the 2018 and 2019 seasons in the UK here: https://twitter.com/MushroomMap/status/1301047935203979264 https://twitter.com/MushroomMap/status/1301047935203979264

serjester 5y ago

Neat. I’d recommend looking into a hexagonal coordinate system. It has the benefit of each block being equidistant from its neighbors and clustering is a breeze. It also looks better. There’s a couple open source libraries Uber has that make it a breeze to work with.

nxpnsv 5y ago
Also all squares are the same screen size not taking projection distortion into account...
pbaumel 5y ago
Thanks for the tip - i'll look into this.

unfunco 5y ago

Do recent weather conditions matter? I always thought they were seasonal, we'd head up to a known spot where they grow in Wales shortly after the first dew of the year (Sept/Oct usually)

deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
lm28469 5y ago
Depends where you live. In relatively dry areas they'll grow like crazy after a few days of rain. If you live in an already humid areas it would be less noticeable I guess.

robinduckett 5y ago

So I checked the mountain and field local to me where they grow every year without fail and it was only a "medium" likelihood :)

pbaumel 5y ago
I'm not sure where you're located, but for most places it's a bit early in the season. I'd expect that location to shoot up to high likelihood through Sept-Oct.

ClearAndPresent 5y ago

Enjoy the map. Don't die. https://fungiflora.com/2017/10/16/psilocybe-semilanceata-lookalikes/ https://fungiflora.com/2017/10/16/psilocybe-semilanceata-loo...

cunidev 5y ago

Would this be feasible for normal (edible) mushroom species as well? Some expensive (and delicious) varieties are quite rare, and a map using data like this could help perhaps.

Alex3917 5y ago
> Would this be feasible for normal (edible) mushroom species as well? It's possible, and would be useful, but generally not to the same extent. Many species of magic mushrooms have extremely precise weather triggers, whereas for most other species it's more like "go outside the 3rd week of July and look next to beech trees."

Aboh33 5y ago

I just read about a harpsichordist who died eating mushrooms he thought were edible https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Schobert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Johann_Schobert

jugg1es 5y ago
Funny item in his wikipedia entry that Schobert was offended when Mozart's dad said his kids could play his music with ease.

anm89 5y ago

As someone who forages mushrooms pretty extensively my advice is not to forage psychedelic mushrooms as a beginner. Most psilocybin mushrooms fall into the colloquial category of "LBMs" (little brown mushrooms) and the advice is almost always not to forage LBMs because there a million of them, they all look alike, and you might not know from region to region what the risk of look a likes are. ' So unless you have a region specific guidebook, and can make an absolutely positive identification (which probably involves identifying spores from a print under a microscope for LBMs), you really should not forage LBMs or any mushrooms for that fact. In some cases you might also need to know how to safely taste or smell the mushrooms and then know what you are tasting or smelling for. No beginner is going to be able to do any of that. Let someone else grow them from a verified strain from a syringe. It's much safer. As an aside, mushroom foraging is very beginner friendly as long as you stick to the right categories. Things like Chicken of The Woods, oysters, and maitakke are very easy to positively identify and don't have many look alikes in most parts of the US. The often propogated idea that mushroom foraging is only for safe for trained experts is totally untrue. The average person can safely forage for mushrooms. Just buy a region specific guidebook, and stick to the categories that your book tells you are safe for your region.

ricardo81 5y ago
Sounds like sensible advice. I've been led to believe the psilocybin ones have blue stalks which can distinguish them from others, but wouldn't pass that on as advice, myself.
- a2tech 5y ago
  Thats one of the helpful identifiers but not the end of the story. Its a useful puzzle piece
- anm89 5y ago
  It is true that afaik, every pislocybe species bruises blue, the problem is, could it bruise blue, contain psilocybin, but also be poisonous. I think the truth is that it is pretty rare for that to be the case or may even be non existent but I'd definitely want to get verification on that for my specific region before harvesting anything. Also, as a general point, it is a myth that bruising blue always indicates the presence of psilocybin. For instance, many boletes bruise blue and don't contain any psilocybin. Here's a picture of an intensely blue staining bolete that does not have psilocybin: https://i.redd.it/waumic0mjh921.jpg https://i.redd.it/waumic0mjh921.jpg

pelasaco 5y ago

Strange that none was found in Brazil. I remember in the region of Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro (mostly Mountain Regions), after a nightly dew over the pastures, you could always find some magic Mushrooms, early in the morning.

wombatmobile 5y ago
None are charted for most countries of the world. The data for the site is only from a few countries, primarily the UK. > Growth records: Psilocybe Semilanceata by NBNAtlas (subset shared under CC-BY) https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551 https://species.nbnatlas.org/species/NBNSYS0000021551

gadders 5y ago

Reminds me of what Terry Pratchett said "All mushrooms are edible, but some are only edible once."

mellavora 5y ago

Am I the only one who finds the map difficult to read? The place-names and borders are almost invisible. Also, pet peeve of mine with most maps-- when I zoom in so that I can see place names, the font gets smaller.

detritus 5y ago

I thought liberty caps needed a cold shock to get them fruiting, which is why we don't see them until Mid-late Autumn? Yet here it's suggesting now is a good time to pick across broad swathes of the North of England - when it's incredibly hot here in Blighty?

sequence7 5y ago

It's worth pointing out that if you're in the UK, for reasons that I'm sure make sense to someone, magic mushrooms are very illegal. Courtesy of the Basement Project [1]: * The 2005 Drugs Act amended the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 to clarify that both fresh and prepared (e.g. dried or stewed) magic mushrooms that contain psilocin or psilocybin (such as the ‘liberty cap’) are Class A drugs. This means it’s illegal to have this type of ‘magic mushrooms’ for yourself, to give away or to sell * Possession is illegal and can get you up to seven years in jail and/or an unlimited fine. * Supplying someone else, even your friends, can get you up to life imprisonment and/or an unlimited fine. [1] https://thebasementproject.org.uk/guidance-addiction/guidance-on-drugs/drugs/drugs-magic-mushrooms/#tab-id-7 https://thebasementproject.org.uk/guidance-addiction/guidanc...

pmoriarty 5y ago
I'd be curious to read some reliable statistics on how many people in the UK (and the US) actually get arrested for picking wild psilocybin mushrooms.

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peanut_worm 5y ago

My county has its own species apparently: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_tampanensis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_tampanensis

sergiomattei 5y ago

TIL there's a psylocibin strain native to Puerto Rico and Dominican Republic, apparently it's very potent: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_guilartensis https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Psilocybe_guilartensis

joshtam 5y ago

How do these mushrooms affect your liver? I suppose if not chosen right they can demolish it, right?