Psilocybe caerulipes
(Peck) Sacc. · Psilocybe sect. Cyanescens
Blue foot
The eastern North American wood-loving Psilocybe. Uncommon, moderate in strength, and easily overlooked because it fruits sparsely on hardwood debris rather than in showy flushes.
1 deadly look-alike. Galerina marginata can be mistaken for this species and causes irreversible organ damage. How to tell them apart.
Potency
- Psilocybin
- 0.15–0.6% of dry weight
- Psilocin
- 0.05–0.2% of dry weight
- Total tryptamines
- 0.2–0.8%
- Relative to cubensis
- 0.87×
Roughly comparable to cubensis. Few assays exist.
Dose ranges for this species
| Tier | Dried | Psilocybin | What to expect |
|---|---|---|---|
| Threshold | 0.34–1.15 g | 1.9–6.3 mg | Mild body load, slight colour and texture enhancement, mood shift. |
| Light | 1.15–2 g | 6.3–11 mg | Clear perceptual change. Surfaces breathe, emotions amplify, time distorts mildly. |
| Common | 2–2.86 g | 11–15.8 mg | Full psychedelic effect. Strong visuals with eyes closed, altered thought, emotional intensity. |
| Strong | 2.86–5.73 g | 15.8–31.5 mg | Ordinary self-reference goes. Marked visual distortion, time stops behaving. |
| Heavy | 5.73 g and above | 31.5 mg and above | Complete disruption of the ordinary sense of being a person in a place. |
Scaled from the standard dried-cubensis tables by this species’ representative alkaloid content. Because that content varies between flushes, treat every figure as an estimate and start below it. Open the full calculator.
Identification
Easiest way to tell: Blue staining confined largely to the stem base, on hardwood debris in eastern North America.
- Cap
- 1–3.5 cm, obtusely conical to convex, cinnamon to dingy brown, hygrophanous with a striate margin.
- Gills
- Adnate to sinuate, pale cinnamon becoming rusty-purple-brown.
- Stem
- 3–6 cm, pale above and brownish below, bruising blue at the base, the name.
- Ring
- Absent; a faint cortina in youth.
- Flesh
- Bruises blue, mostly at the stem base.
- Spore print
- Purple-brown
- Bruising
- Blue at the stem base
Habitat
- Substrate
- Birch and maple debris, Hardwood slash, Rotting logs
- Regions
- Northeastern United States, Great Lakes, Eastern Canada
- Season
- May to December, most often late summer and autumn
Associated with disturbed hardwood forest and logging debris.
Look-alikes
Cultivation
Sources
- [1]Stamets, Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World (1996)
- [2]Beug & Bigwood, 'Psilocybin and psilocin levels in twenty species' (1982)