Good day everyone,

recently the topic of crossing Psilocybe Cubensis varieties came up and since my most recent growing endeavors led me to create a cross (not yet 100% confirmed), I thought why not document my progress here.

A while ago I received a couple of clone cultures from a friend. I inoculated quite a few grain jars with agar wedges. Once these were fully colonized, I mixed the spawn with coir/vermiculite.
It turned out that I made too many jars, so I got a few left over jars I didn't know what to do with. I like to experiment, so I decided to mix two different varieties and spawn them to one tub. One of these varieties is called TAT, which is an albino and the other is PE7, which is a cross between PE and Texan.

It is important to note that I chose two varieties that express distinct differences in phenotype (please see the first two pictures attached, first is TAT, second is PE7). This is important, because otherwise it will be difficult to see if the crossing attempt has been successful. At least for the hobby mycologist who doesn't own the equipment for DNA sequencing.

I did not really expect this to work on my first attempt. I thought I will just get a tub with two varieties growing side by side.
However soon I saw the first pins popping up. The more they grew, the more I saw that next to the typical TAT fruits others appeared, which didn't resemble PE7 at all. They expressed a mix of TAT and PE7.

This new variety has yellow gills, yellowish caps and doesn't drop spores, which is a trait I like. (Third picture shows the fruits and fourth the gills)
So I took a spore swab and some tissue samples and inoculated some agar dishes with these, which are currently growing. I still need to do some tranfers and clean the cultures from any contaminants, before I send these to grain.
It will take a lot of work and time to stabilize this variety.

This is kind of exciting to me and I hope others will enjoy following along. If you got any questions let me know.

Amazing! Gorgeous! Such a wonderful hobby

The yellow gills are strangely reminiscent of UK Psilocybe cyanescens before the spores ripen. I could spend hours looking at those.

Have you tried tissue cloning from one of the fruits?

I know what you mean, these gills are fascinating !
I wasn't aware that cyanescens grow over in the UK. That's quite cool! I grew up not far away from the UK and all I could find back then were psilocybe semilanceata, even though I am sure there must be several other Psilocybe species out there.

I did indeed take a tissue sample for cloning purposes, but also spores. I plan on growing out one tubs filled with clones and one tub of multispore for breeding purposes.

Such an exciting project you have.

Yes, I cut my shroomie teeth on liberty caps too, of course. However, the type collection for P. cyanescens was actually made by the mycologist E.M.Wakefield in the UK. This may have been from specimens found at Kew Gardens, though, so they could have come from anywhere. Curiously enough, the first cyanescens I ever found were in Birmingham, UK, which was Elsie Wakefield's birthplace.

There are dedicated teams of municipal gardeners who, unwittingly or not, support the the species through their mulching activities. Thanks to their efforts I got to the stage where I never needed to pick another magic mushroom again. Not that I let that keep me from the sheer joy of communing with these fascinating lifeforms in their habitat whenever the opportunity arises.

Wishing you much joy and success!

Wonderful, thanks for sharing!

Those are some beautiful fruits!

How do the effects compare to the TAT and PE7?

Thanks guys, I feel this is going to be a lot of fun .

DF0, that's quite cool! I heard that people create their own outdoor patches, so that sounds like a likely scenario. Thanks for planting a new seed in my head for a new project... once I moved back to Europe I will try and make my own outdoor patch!

CosmoD, I still have to try the PE7. I can say that the TAT are producing lovely effects at a 2 gram dose. Not overwhelming and "friendly" in its nature, but that of course also got to do with my set and setting I guess. TATs are stronger than the average Cube though.

I will try the PE7 soon and will let you know.
Currently I save myself for my very first Mescaline citrate experience, which I plan to have this weekend. I am so excited !

thanks for sharing. i will be following along, this is definitely something i am interested in doing myself in the future.
i wonder if it would be easier to do on agar, so you can see three distinct types of mycelium and easily transfer from the new patch. i will get involved too when i can, got a lot going on right now but hopefully i can get back to it soon.

Yes please, share your progress as soon as you got time for a project!

I agree, agar work makes success more likely. If I remember correctly the most promising way of attemting a cross without special equipment, is to streak the spores of two different varieties of the same species onto one agar dish.

Very glad you were able to start this thread! Your fruits are so beautiful and something I am aspiring towards.

In my next inoculation I kind of want to try this but in my own way, by inoculating one bag of grain with two different liquid cultures. I'm hoping to do a big inoculation this week of grain, agar, and LC, so will hopefully will be able to try it then and let you know some results in the next several weeks.

One love

Thank you Void! Yes, it would be cool if everyone who tries something like that would document their progress here.

Inoculating with LC from two different varieties sounds like a good plan and I keep my fingersccrossed it works out .

That's really cool. Not how most people are doing cube crosses, but looking at the pics I'd definitely say it worked! I might have to try this and see what happens.

A while ago, there was someone who did basically the same with truffles. I think it was tampanensis. There has not been much activity on their cyber-shrooms site recently though.

I can imagine it to be a little more tricky to do this with stones. Though I never grew them... I say that because whenever I tried this, I chose two different varieties that look as different as possible. Without dna sequencing or similar I have no way telling whether it was a success or not other than using my eyes.
I want to meantion at this point that I tried this three times so far and the first two times there were no signs that it has worked out. So one needs a little bit of luck and patience on their side.

The real work begins when one wants to stabilize the cross. I think RustyWhites have only been stable enough after the F10 generation has been created. This took four years of work if I remember correctly. This is necessary if one wants to pass on the genetics to other via spore print.