Hi

I have a quick question regarding my psilocybe cyanescens mycelium, which I am propagating.

I collected the mycelium from a wild patch I found a few years ago. Thing is, I dug it out the year after I found the specimens and at that time there weren`t any fruit bodies.
Lately I noticed that P. Cubensis mycelium blues, but my assumed cyanescens myc. stays white, despite touching/hurting it.

So does anyone know if woodlover-myc. should blue aswell (Logically I think they should blue, as they have more alkaloids) ? If they do, I may have collected the wrong mycelium

I am grateful for any opinions : )

PlantPipeline

I think I found the answer myself

Apparently psilocybes start producing the alkaloids only when they start fruiting. At that point it should theoretically be possible to see the bluing reaction in the mycelium aswell.
So the only way to see if its actually the right mycelium, is waiting for the mycelium to fruit

Actually in most Psilocybe mushrooms the mycelium does produce psilocybin, generally less than fruiting body but still significant (I just recently posted something related here)

Also, the relationship between blue-bruising and psilocybin content is not exactly clear. While often it can be a good indication, its not necessarily related. For example check this quote:



On the other hand, apparently some Boletus as well as some Mycena mushrooms will bruise blue and not contain psilocybin (Voogelbreinder 2009)

Here's an interesting article on the relationship between bruising and psilocybin content, and a theory on why it may happen. In Trout's Some Simple Tryptamines book he also discusses other hypothesis and proposed molecule structures for this phenomenon.

Not so much. Bluing that is. Maybe hyphal knots just prior to fruiting, but I've never seen it. Next time, you might want to wait until it fruits and use stem butts....

Thanks for your help, both of you!

I was aware that mycelium produces alkaloids aswell but I didn`t know at what stage.
Yeah, next time I will cut stembutts and rule out the risk of collecting the wrong ones...I should have done it in the first place. It would be rather frustrating to make the effort to cultivate it, just to end up with the wrong fruits

Stem butts to cardboard is an excellent non-sterile technique for propagating woodlovers. I've posted about this around here somewhere, once or twice.