Inocybe species
Fibrecaps
A large genus of small brown mushrooms with radially fibrous, often splitting caps. Some stain slightly bluish-green at the stem base, which has caught people out. The rapid onset of profuse sweating distinguishes the poisoning clearly from a psilocybin experience.
What it does
- Toxin
- Muscarine, at concentrations far above those in Amanita muscaria despite the name. It directly stimulates muscarinic acetylcholine receptors.
- Time to symptoms
- Fast, 15 minutes to 2 hours.
- Outcome
- The cholinergic syndrome: heavy sweating, streaming eyes and nose, salivation, vomiting, diarrhoea, constricted pupils, slow heart rate. Rarely fatal in healthy adults, and treatable with atropine, but genuinely dangerous for anyone with a cardiac condition.
Decisive characters
Each of these settles the question on its own. If one says no, the answer is no, regardless of what everything else says.
Spore print
Psilocybin speciesDark purple-brown
Look-alikeDull brown to clay-brown, never purple
Supporting characters
Useful corroboration. Not sufficient alone.
Cap surface
Psilocybin speciesSmooth, often viscid when wet, hygrophanous
Look-alikeDistinctly radially fibrous or silky, frequently splitting at the margin
Smell
Psilocybin speciesFarinaceous or faint
Look-alikeOften strongly and unpleasantly spermatic or earthy