Summary:
Features include 1) a hygrophanous, cinnamon-brown to dull orangish-brown, viscid, peelable, striate cap, 2) adnate to somewhat decurrent gills that are pale brownish to dark purple-brown and somewhat spotted, with whitish edges, 3) a white to straw-white stem that is covered with silky fibrils below the ring or ring zone and smooth above, 4) growth on dung, on manured soil or along trails, 5) a dark purple-brown spore deposit, and 6) microscopic characters. It is one of the more common dung dwellers in colder boreal climates, along with Protostropharia semiglobata and Panaeolus species (Stamets). The name Psilocybe moellerii is incorrect, because after -er, the correct ending is -i not -ii.

Gills:
bluntly adnate to subdecurrent; pale brownish to dark purple-brown, "somewhat spotted from the uneven ripening of spores", with whitish edges, (Stamets), broadly adnate to short-decurrent; pale brownish to dark violaceous brown, somewhat mottled, edges whitish; edges floccose, (Guzman)

Stem:
2-5(8.5)cm x 0.4-0.5(0.6)cm, equal to slightly widened near base, flexuous [wavy], tough, and stuffed with a whitish pith; covered with silky fibrils below the ring zone and smooth above, (Stamets), (2)3-5(8.5)cm x (0.15)0.4-0.5(0.6)cm, equal or subbulbous [somewhat bulbous], occasionally slightly enlarged at top, "more or less tough, fragile, flexuous, stuffed with a white pith to hollow"; white to straw white; "flocculosely villous to silky-fibrillose below the zone of attachment of the veil to more or less glabrous", (Guzman)

Veil:
partial veil "membranous (subfloccose), leaving a fragile membranous annulus that soon deteriorates into a dark, often middle-to-superior annular zone, typically darkened with spores", (Stamets), "well developed, as white subfloccose mass", forming a more or less fleeting ring, submembranous to fibrillose, white, when old frequently disappearing or leaving a collapsed, fibrillose, dark violaceous brown zone from spores, (Guzman)

Odor:
not distinctive (Guzman)

Taste:
not distinctive (Guzman)

Microscopic spores:
spores 11-14(16) x 6.6-8.8 microns, subelliptic in side view, subhexagonal in face view; basidia 4-spored; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia 18-40 x 4-9(11) microns, fusoid-ventricose with a flexuous [wavy] neck, 2.2-4 microns wide, (Stamets), spores (11)13-14(16) x (7)7.7-8.8 x 6.6-7.7 microns, subhexagonal in face view, subelliptic in side view, thick-walled, yellowish-brown, with broad germ pore; basidia 4-spored, rarely 2-spored, 27-35 x 10-12 microns, colorless, "ventricose-subclavate or pedicellate, sometimes with a slight median constriction"; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia very abundant, (18)25-40 x 4-9(11) microns, colorless, subcylindric, moniliform, ventricose-fusoid or lageniform, sometimes somewhat pedicellate, neck flexuous, 2.2-4 microns wide, sometimes with a colorless drop of a viscous material at apex; clamp connections present, (Guzman, who mentions fungi reported by other authors as D. merdaria with large spores in the ranges 13-15 microns and 12-17 microns, belong to D. moelleri on the basis of large spores)

Spore deposit:
dark purple-brown (Stamets), dark violaceous brown (Guzman)

Notes:
Deconica moelleri was examined from WA, OR, Greenland, Argentina, Chile, Peru, Czechoslovakia, France, and Sweden, and it was described from the Faeroes Islands, (Guzman). There are Paul Kroeger collections from BC deposited at the University of British Columbia.

EDIBILITY

not conclusively shown to be active (Stamets)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Psilocybe moelleri Guzman