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Species Information
Summary: Features include 1) a hygrophanous, dark brown to dark reddish brown to ochraceous, viscid, peelable, striate cap, 2) adnate to somewhat decurrent, distant gills that are light gray brown to very dark reddish brown to violet brown, 3) a smooth or somewhat fibrillose stem that is whitish or pale reddish brown or cap-colored, 4) growth in moss, 5) a purple brown to dark grayish brown spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters. This is the original type species of Psilocybe, and there is molecular evidence that it is not closely related to the hallucinogenic Psilocybe spp. (e.g. Moncalvo(1)). To avoid the renaming of the hallucinogenic species, it was proposed in 2005 to conserve the name Psilocybe, with P. semilanceata as the type, leaving the option to use Deconica as the name for the non-hallucinogenic clade. The proposal was accepted by the Nomenclature Committee for Fungi in 2009.
Deconica montana is found in WA, OR, and ID, (Stamets) and CA (Desjardin). It is frequent on foray lists from BC, and there are BC collections at the University of British Columbia: one of these is described microscopically in Guzman(4) and has smaller cheilocystidia than reported in Guzman(1). Collections were also examined from AK, AZ, ID, MI, NH, NY, OR, TN, WA, Greenland, Mexico, Jamaica, Argentina, Chile, Colombia, Venezuela, Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Hungary, Sweden, Switzerland, United Kingdom, and USSR, and it was reported from Norway, northern and eastern Africa and Australia, (Guzman(1)). Distribution also includes the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Russia, and Japan, (Stamets).
Gills: adnate to subdecurrent, subdistant, narrow to moderately broad; "light gray brown to very dark reddish brown to violet brown with spore maturity", (Stamets), broadly adnate, sometimes short subdecurrent; pale gray brown to dark violaceous brown, with paler or whitish edges, (Guzman(1))
Stem: 1.5-4(5)cm x 0.1-0.2cm, mostly equal to slightly enlarged at base, often flexuous [wavy]; reddish brown or nearly colored as cap; "dry, smooth or having a few scattered fibrils", (Stamets), 1.6-2.5(5)cm x (0.05)0.1-0.15(0.2)cm, equal, hollow, somewhat flexuous; whitish or pale reddish brown to colored as cap or reddish brown toward base, apex paler; "somewhat fibrillose, glabrous, but at first with very minute white appressed fibrillose patches from the veil", (Guzman(1))
Veil: partial veil "thinly cortinate, soon obscured", (Stamets), rudimentary, whitish to pale brownish from spores, floccose fibrillose, remains at cap margin and top of stem, but not forming ring, (Guzman(1))
Odor: none or slightly fungal (Guzman(1)), not distinctive (Phillips), pleasant (Miller)
Taste: none or slightly fungal (Guzman(1)), not distinctive (Phillips)
Microscopic spores: spores 5.5-8(10) x 4-5 microns, subrhomboid [more or less rhomboid] in face view and subelliptic [more or less elliptic] in side view, thick-walled; basidia 4-spored; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia ventricose with elongated apices, sometimes forked, 2-3.5 microns thick, or lageniform (15)22-45 x 4.4-7.5(10) microns, (Stamets), spores (6.5)7-8.5(9.9) x 4.5-5.5 x 3.3-5 microns, subrhomboid in face view, subelliptic in side view, with thick (1 micron) dark brownish wall, broad flat germ pore up to 1 micron wide; basidia 4-spored, sometimes 2-spored, 16-22 x 5.4-7.7 microns, "cylindric-subpyriform or ventricose", colorless or nearly colorless; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia forming a sterile band, (15)22-45 x 4.4-7.5(10) microns, colorless, lageniform or ventricose with acute apex, neck elongated, 2-3.5 microns wide, sometimes divided, "frequently with drops of a highly viscous substance at apex"; clamp connections present, (Guzman(1)), spores 7-8.5(9) x (4)5-5.5 x 4-5 microns, "subrhomboid or subellipsoid in face-view, subellipsoid in side-view", thick-walled, wall up to 1 micron thick, with broad germ pore; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia 17-26 x (4)6-7 microns; cap cuticle an ixocutis up to 10 microns thick, composed of colorless hyphae 1.5-3 microns wide, (Guzman(4))
Spore deposit: dark grayish brown (Stamets), dark gray brown (Guzman(1)), purple brown (Phillips), purple-brown to blackish violet gray, (Miller)
Habitat / Range
scattered to numerous, in mossy ground, less common on sandy soils, especially at higher elevations, (may be obligate saprophyte on dead root masses), (Stamets), gregarious, rarely single "on soil or sandy soil, always covered by mosses or dense bryophyte mats" (especially Polytrichum, not Sphagnum), "in open forests, roadsides, tracks, banks of rivulets, fire places, of coniferous or deciduous trees of [sic] along the margin of pasture-lands", (Guzman(1)), spring, summer, and fall, (Miller)
Similar Species
Deconica crobula and Deconica inquilina are somewhat similar but among other differences, habitat is different. Psilocybe physaloides [see Deconica subviscida] is striate only 1/3 to 1/2 the distance to the center (instead of striate to the center) and it has a different habitat.
