Nor Cal Shrooms ID please

k so im in nor cal between sac and oregon border, got a random hair up my ass to look up mushies and try to find some. just goit done with a bunch of rain so decided was good a time as any. went and searched in a family members horse pasture this is what a found scattered in the horse poo.
spore prints are dark brown and the stems are not bruising blue im currently drying them, everything ive seen/read has me believing that they are psilocybe cyanofriscosa. oh i wish im correct lol

Well I can say with out a purple spore print and blue bruising I wouldn't even dream about eating them unless I had a SERIOUS mycologist look at them. Purple spores or common to cubensis mushrooms and I don't believe any others. Other colors can be associated with different species and its more of a crap shot I think. Even if they had purple prints and bruised blue I would be very nervous without a good field guild and someone experienced. I believe that cubensis don't have many copy cat mushrooms if any, however I think that the various Cyan can. You gotta be careful man, this literally is life of death. I LOVE mushrooms but I do not fuck with wild ones unless I have a PRO with me.

Canndo?.....

Only found wild shrooms once..gave the
3 I found to a friend and he tripped balls..but I used the audobon society feild guide to north american mushrooms...as a feild guide..get the insinuation?...

yeah i wouldnt eat them without a positive ID what im suspecting it to be is a cyan sub-species i do believe but im not for sure but the area it was found, environment and just about everything ive looked up pictures and information are pointing to this one species but i am a newb not an expert and know that the tiniest detail could be the difference between life and death. hence why im asking for help id'ing

so rory are you saying take a field guide with me to find the shrooms and then get a dumb ass friend to try them for me first?

Not in the least..do you even know about audubon and what the feild guide is...?...John j. Audubon...??...check out the feild guide,then ask me that...why the f*** would I endanger my friend...

And none of my friends are dumb...thanks tho for insulting a stranger.

and I'm east side with the bluefoot psycilocybe...

We got a month to go before we need to look for fungus...I only looked 2 times..lucky once..realized a walk at walmart was easier...

whoa there i wasnt insulting your friends at all i thought it was odd which was why i asked, i have been looking up a few different field guides and was thinking of settling on Mushrooms Demystified by David Arora what ive read on it points towards it being the book for me being on the west coast. and finding these today was completely random was doing some other stuff around the property and decided to look for shits and giggles for an hour or so and thats what i found. i understand it would be incredibly lucky if they were worth a shit was just curious is all

Pretty sure those are not in the genus Psilocybe. Some identifying characters: Gelatinous pellicle (membrane over the the cap), striated cap margin, and of course the blue bruising and purple spore print.

What makes you think they are friscosa? What were they growing from? If they were in a pasture I would say that's an other reason they are something else, unless there are wood chips buried there.

Sry if I came off wrong but the phrase was suggestive...I came across the guide and its informative..almost every common shroom is listed with all their identifying characteristics..I never took shrooms till I was 14..but I had studied that guide to its fullest since I was 11...I'm 34 now,so I figure it has some merit...or the rubbermaid isle at walmart..very merit worthy...

i guess the only thing that had me hoping for friscosa mushies was just dreamin big lol, no purple spore print they were found in a horse pasture but i only found the mushrooms growing in poo around trees if that makes any difference, i mean no wood chips but lots of old dead branches on the ground around it, i was reading also that the friscosas dont always bruise blue and had a more brownish spore print, honestly growing them doesnt seem very hard but i have been getting so bored lately and am just wanting to get into fungi hunting. more of a past time to start for me then anything and if i can enjoy a trip along the way then hell yeah.

rory420420 said:

Canndo?.....

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I would not eat them. There are some varieties of cyans that spore brown and some that don't bruise blue or green but these are too much like lbms - odds are if the finder ate them he nothing would happen or h would get a stomach ache but why take the chance for that jackpot high? The only way the op is going to know is if he has a competent field guide AND a competent human, or he could do a scanning electron microsopy comparision of the spores with a known sample. REMEMBER

REMEMBER, that pictures on the internet is not enough for most species, there needs to be a description of the tenacity of the mycelium, the pelicle (if there is one), the substrate, the environment and how the base of the mushroom is connected, in short you have to be observe the fruit in the wild to really know what it is in the non-distinctive species.. Some are obvious, most are not especially when it comes to lbms.

Exactly what I was trying to say canndo.

I have been dreaming of coming across a boletus, ANY boletus for 30 years, oh yes, I have been in the right place at the wrong time and found them wormy and rotten. The point is that unless you know someone or you are the kind of person who hits the lotto, you aren't going to find what you seek in places not already known for them..... all by yourself.


There is a reason foragers keep their patches so secret, ask a maitaki forager where he goes and he will look at you as though you were from another planet. Follow him and you may simply follow him to a dennys somewhere. And the morel folk can be downright mean.

Thundercat said:

Exactly what I was trying to say canndo.

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and you said it well, - WHY do we see these pictures and "do I have magic mushrooms" on this site so much?

I'm really scared for some of these guys honestly. Not directing that at the OP nessecarly, but I know there are young kids on here pretending to be adults. I hope I don't see the thread some day about "are these magic mushrooms" or "should I eat these", with a post a few days later about being in the hospital or from friend saying that the kid died.

Thundercat said:

I'm really scared for some of these guys honestly. Not directing that at the OP nessecarly, but I know there are young kids on here pretending to be adults. I hope I don't see the thread some day about "are these magic mushrooms" or "should I eat these", with a post a few days later about being in the hospital or from friend saying that the kid died.

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I think I told a story once here of a forage where we came across a field of the most beuatiful Amanita bisporigera I had ever seen - HUGE, georgious. A few days later we read a report that a mexican family had all grown very sick and some had died as a result of eating the very mushrooms that we had seen.. It seems that there is a very similar species in their homeland that is choice and they made a fatal mistake. they didn't know that different regions produce mushrooms that can look very very similar but have very different effects.


Hell, escept for some very distinctive species I will not apply my knowlege of north western fungus to the south and lately have little interest in foraging for food, more for the beauty of the fruit and the silent hunt that excercises your eyes and senses.

I love foraging for the beauty and the hunt. I love taking nice long hikes during the right temps and weather and finding mushrooms just to take pictures of and check out. I found a neat one a few years ago that was neon orange. The same day i found one that looked like the cap had been dusted with metallic purple dust. I really find them fascinating.