Summary:
Features include 1) a reddish orange to brick red or reddish brown, viscid, peelable cap with fleeting white scales at the margin, 2) whitish to gray gills that become grayish brown to almost black with paler edges, 3) a stem that is brownish orange to reddish and scaly below the membranous, cottony ring and whitish above it, 4) growth on decayed wood or wood debris, and 5) a grayish purple brown spore deposit. This is considered by some a variety of Psilocybe squamosa. It was moved to Psilocybe from Stropharia (which generally has chrysocystidia), but some authors retained it in Stropharia.

Cap:
3-5cm across, convex - bell-shaped; dull yellow ocher to tawny, with paler, faint scales at margin; viscid, (Phillips), (2)3-5(8)cm across, hemispheric to conic or convex, not umbonate, then flattened, less often somewhat umbonate; "more or less hygrophanous, brownish to ochraceous, but with the disc tawny or somewhat reddish brown"; viscid, with separable pellicle [cap skin] when fresh, subsquamose [somewhat scaly] sprinkled with conspicuous, superficial, concentric, fleeting, white scales mainly toward the margin, (Guzman), 3-8cm across, conic or obtusely conic when young, with an incurved margin, soon becoming broadly bell-shaped to convex and often with conic umbo; yellowish brown to orangish brown; viscid when moist from separable gelatinous pellicle, at first with small scales along margin, but soon smooth, (Stamets)

Flesh:
thin; whitish, (Phillips), thin, watery; pallid to brownish, often reddish when moist, usually darker in stem than cap, (Guzman), relatively thin and watery brown when wet, (Stamets)

Gills:
"adnate to adnexed, or sinuate, sometimes uncinate, close to subdistant, moderately broad", 2 or 3 tiers of subgills; pallid gray, "soon becoming grayish brown and eventually dark purplish brown when fully mature", (Stamets), "adnate, rather crowded to almost distant, broad; whitish to gray then almost black" with edges pale, (Phillips)

Stem:
5-10(12)cm x 0.3-0.7(0.8)cm, nearly equal to swollen and often curved at base; hollow when old; pallid towards top and more brownish in lower part; covered at first with small, brown to reddish brown, floccose scales to the ring, "usually with orangish rhizomorphs protruding about the base", (Stamets), "with small, brown fibrillose squamules when young", becoming more reddish brown when old, (Guzman), 6-12cm x 0.3-0.8cm, long, slender; brownish orange to red like cap; whitish above the ring, densely scaly in lower half, (Phillips)

Veil:
partial veil membranous, fragile, leaving a superior membranous ring often disappearing when old, (Stamets), distinct, membranous, cottony ring (Phillips)

Odor:
not distinctive (Phillips)

Taste:
not distinctive (Phillips), unpleasant (Miller)

Microscopic spores:
spores 11-14 x 6.6-8.5 microns, close to those of Psilocybe squamosa in size, but with an eccentric germ pore, [presumably more or less elliptic, smooth]; basidia 4-spored; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia (36)44-66 x 3.3-6 microns, sublageniform (more or less gourd-shaped) to filamentous, somewhat mucronate [tipped with an abrupt short point from a relatively flat surface], with an extended and flexuous [wavy] neck, 3-4 microns thick, (Stamets), microscopic characters as in Psilocybe squamosa (Guzman), 12-14 x 6-7.5 microns, elliptic, with germ pore distinctly eccentric, (Phillips)

Spore deposit:
grayish purple brown (Stamets), purple brown (Phillips)

Notes:
There are collections of this variety from WA and VA at the University of Washington. There are collections of this variety from BC at the University of British Columbia. It has been reported from Pacific Northwest, NY, MD, northern to central Europe, and Japan, (Stamets). Guzman examined collections from NY, France, and the Netherlands, and noted reports from England, Spain, northern Africa, and Japan.

EDIBILITY

edible according to some, but not palatable, not active, (Stamets), not edible (Phillips)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Psilocybe squamosa (Pers.) P.D. Orton
Psilocybe thrausta (Schulzer ex Kalchbr.) Bon