Talk:List of psilocybin mushroom species/Archive 1

Not sure about these
Wow, this article is looking really good. I agree with all of these except the following two:

* Panaeolus papilionaceus var. papilionaceus (Bull.) Quél. * Panaeolus papilionaceus var. parvisporus Ewald Gerhardt

I know there are some references that say that these species are active, however emperical evidence suggests that these are not active. Lots of people have eaten them and I haven't seen any solid reports that anyone noticed any effects.

Alan Rockefeller (Talk - contribs) 09:38, 19 January 2010 (UTC)

Sourcing
The list appears to have been mostly copied from here, which is a problem as that list is derived from here. The criteria for inclusion in that list are not that a mushroom contains psilocybin but "those species with the bluing feature or with indolic substances or species which suggest that they have such substances". As such, every item on this list needs to be assessed to determine if sources support it containing psilocybin. --Pontificalibus (talk) 13:28, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree with that assessment. At least one of the species recently removed from the list (e.g., Conocybe kuehneriana) has been shown to contain psilocin, but not psilocybin. I think this page may be more useful if it included fungi which contain the "other" neurotropic compounds related to psilocybin (psilocin, baeocystin and norbaeocystin), but that would probably mean the title should be changed (List of neurotropic mushrooms?). Would it be helpful to set this up in a table format and have a column listing published concentrations of these compounds from the literature? Sasata (talk) 15:10, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I agree the title needs broadening, but I'm not convinced about the term "neurotropic" (no PubMed results for the query neurotropic[Title/Abstract] AND psilocybin[Title/Abstract] ) and I think "psychoactive" is the more accepted common name. Good idea to make this a table, and perhaps go through checking Category:Psychoactive fungi at the same time. --Pontificalibus  (talk) 16:43, 1 September 2011 (UTC)
 * All mushrooms that contain psilocin also contain psilocybin, baeocystin and norbaeocystin. There are a lot of errors in the literature regarding the content of various mushrooms.  Alan Rockefeller (Talk - contribs) 05:49, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Scope of article and what could we include in a table
Right now we include mushrooms that have had any quantity of psilocybin detected in any specimen. At some point we may find a mushroom that contains only trace amounts of psilocybin. While this would certainly be included on the list, I feel the spirit of the list is to detail those mushrooms that are psychoactive. So if we tabulate this list, I think a column for detected quantity of psychoactive chemicals would be useful, but also a column indicating if there are reliable sources reporting on the effects from human consumption including psychoactive effects, and also a "further observations" column. Then for P.foenisecii we could detail the range of quantities of psilocybin found in various studies, and also report the debate surrounding it's psychoactive properties. This would fit with changing the title to List of psychoactive mushrooms and including some other species such as Amanitas etc... Any thoughts on this?--Pontificalibus (talk) 22:14, 3 September 2011 (UTC)
 * I like the idea. I whipped up a table with some of the elements that you mentioned, with three example species. This is still very rough (and incomplete), but will help us plan the optimum presentation. Perhaps name, authority, and year could be wrapped up into one column (as the emphasis here is not so much on taxonomy). Similarly, the synonyms could be left out completely, but on the other hand, many of these species are known by different names in the older literature, so perhaps the average reader might find this tabulated information useful? The "Quantity of psychoactives" column will likely end up being largely a collection of citations to mostly primary literature, but I think that's what the average reader will be looking for. Comments? Please feel free to tinker with the table as you see fit. Sasata (talk) 02:51, 4 September 2011 (UTC)


 * Key


 * References


 * Cited literature
 * Stamets, Paul. (1996). Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. ISBN 0898158397


 * Perhaps a column to show if its psychoactivty in humans has been reported? --Pontificalibus (talk) 12:35, 4 September 2011 (UTC) :


 * References


 * Cited literature
 * Stamets, Paul. (1996). Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. ISBN 0898158397

A thought- are the six chemicals you list unambiguously the only psychoactive chemicals produced by fungi? I worry that if you're providing a detailed list of all reported species (which would, without a doubt, be a worthwhile enterprise) containing any of the chemicals, it may be more useful to have several separate lists; perhaps, then, a parent article could list only those which have been used recreationally? So, this article could list all those obscure species with small amounts of psilocybin, while the main "List of psychoactive mushrooms" would list liberty caps, fly agarics and that kind of thing. Alternatively, if the numbers are managable, this article could perhaps be split depending on the particular chemicals... I'm not sure. J Milburn (talk) 15:07, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Alternatively, you could have separate columns for each chemical, with tick-boxes, so that the list could be sorted to list only those mushrooms which contain a particular chemical. I'll have a fiddle and create a mock-up. J Milburn (talk) 15:09, 4 September 2011 (UTC)


 * References


 * Cited literature
 * Stamets, Paul. (1996). Psilocybin Mushrooms of the World. Berkeley, CA: Ten Speed Press. ISBN 0898158397

Panaeolina foenisecii
Panaeolina foenisecii is not a psychoactive mushroom. There are many reports of it containing psilocybin. This is because it shares its habitat with a psychoactive lookalike, Panaeolus cinctulus. Mixed collections are extremely common, resulting in many false positives in the literature. I know of dozens of people who have eaten Panaeolina foenisecii to see if it is psychoactive. All of them report no effects or diarrhea and none of them experienced hallucinogenic effects. I consider Wikipedia extremely accurate, and this is the only thing that wikipedia says that I know to be incorrect. I know that a 2006 analysis shows psilocybin, but I strongly doubt that the people who did that study checked the spore ornamentation on all of the mushrooms tested to make sure that none of them were Panaeolus cinctulus. Alan Rockefeller (Talk - contribs) 06:00, 4 September 2011 (UTC)
 * Please see WP:Verifiability; Wikipedia has to base its information on reliable sources; your personal experience and postings from usenet groups cannot be used as a reliable source of information (even though the information may be true). When this page gets built up, we'll make sure the conflicting reports from different sources regarding psychoactive compounds in P. foenisecii are properly noted (and in the main article as well). Do you know of a source that backs up your statement "Mixed collections are extremely common" that we could add? Sasata (talk) 14:18, 4 September 2011 (UTC)

Hypholoma popperianum is suspect
The inclusion of Hypholoma species in this article is suspect. Perhaps they should be dropped unless there is some sort of conclusive evidence otherwise. The most suspect Hypholoma species is H. popperianum. It was described from a single collection (that is bad) and there has been no chemical analysis. The type collection consists of one cap and a couple stems. An examination of the type collection is here: http://mushroomobserver.org/name/show_name/5329. It says "This species is only known from a single collection, by Singer from an unknown location in San Francisco prior to 1973. He claims that he observed blue staining on this specimen, and this was the basis for it being frequently mentioned as a psilocybin-containing species.

While I was at SFSU, I had the opportunity to carry out a type study on the collection, which consists of a single cap and some stipe material. (That is the only collection of this species ever made.) The material was in a very poor state of preservation, but it appeared to either Leratiomyces ceres or perhaps a Pholiota (chrysocystidia were abundant). My guess is that the “blue staining” observed may have been some sort of blackening reaction of the pileus that was misinterpreted. I was not able to nail down an identification of it due to the state of preservation of the material (also, I never tried to get DNA for sequencing), but in all likelihood, this is simply a more commonly occurring Leratiomyces or Pholiota that was misidentified as being distinct and blue-staining."

Alan Rockefeller (Talk - contribs) 00:34, 8 February 2012 (UTC)