Summary:
Features include 1) a hygrophanous, dark grayish brown to cinnamon brown, viscid, peelable, striate cap, 2) cap shape that is conic expanding to bell-shaped or convex and never having more than a low umbo, 3) flesh that sometimes bruises blue when injured, 4) chocolate brown mature gills with white edges, 5) a white to yellow to yellowish brown stem with fibrillose patches, 6) basal mycelium that can bruise bluish, 7) a farinaceous odor and taste, 8) growth in rich grassy areas, 9) a dark purple brown spore deposit, and 10) microscopic characters. Some treat this taxon as a variety of Psilocybe semilanceata. There has been some confusion involving this species and Psilocybe callosa, which Guzman(1) regards as the correct name for this species, with P. strictipes as a synonym. For instance according to Guzman(1), A.H. Smith probably used a specimen of Psilocybe baeocystis to make a line drawing in their description of P. strictipes. Stamets wrote in his 1996 guide, "Virtually all the field guides published since 1958, including mine (1978), erroneously describe P. strictipes" (Stamets(1)). Psilocybe strictipes is a slender grassland species, bridging P. semilanceata and P. pelliculosa, 2 taxa that are very similar in general appearance except for habitat preferences and/or microscopic details. The description here is from Stamets(1) except where specified.

Cap:
0.5-3cm across, conic at first, expanding to convex, bell-shaped, "and eventually broadly convex", "and typically not sharply umbonate but may have low umbo"; dark grayish brown to cinnamon brown, fading to straw or light yellow in drying; smooth, translucent-striate near margin, which may have slight veil remnants, viscid when moist from a separable gelatinous pellicle, (Stamets), hygrophanous (Guzman for P. callosa)

Flesh:
whitish and colored as surface in cap; tough and brownish in stem, blueing when cut, (Guzman), sometimes bruising bluish when injured, (Stamets)

Gills:
adnate, sometimes subdecurrent [somewhat decurrent]; chocolate brown with whitish edges when mature

Stem:
4-7(13)cm x 0.2-0.3cm, equal, straight to flexuous [wavy], typically tough, cartilaginous; white to yellow to yellowish brown; "decorated with fibrillose patches, veil remnants, and basal mycelium that can bruise bluish", base is not adorned with cord-like rhizomorphs, (Stamets), staining blue where injured (Guzman for P. callosa)

Veil:
partial veil "thinly cortinate, fragile, and rarely leaving an annular zone on the upper regions of the stem"

Odor:
farinaceous when young, (Guzman), none (Singer)

Taste:
farinaceous when young (Guzman)

Microscopic spores:
spores 10-12 x 5.5-8 microns, subelliptic [more or less elliptic] to suboblong [more or less oblong], [presumably smooth, presumably with germ pore]; basidia 4-spored, pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia 21-45 x 7-10 microns, lageniform with an extended neck, 2-3.5 microns wide, (Stamets), spores 9-12 x 5.5-6.5 microns, (Singer), spores (8.5)10-12(13.2) x (5.5)6-6.6(8) microns, subelliptic or suboblong both in face and side view or somewhat inequilateral in side view, yellowish brown, thick-walled (1.5 microns), with broad germ pore; basidia 4-spored, 23-33 x 6.6-12 microns, colorless, clavate to subcylindric with a median constriction, frequently with a basal clamp connection; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia abundant, forming a sterile band, 21-46(50) x 7-10 microns, colorless, thin-walled, lageniform or sublageniform with a long neck 2-3.6 microns wide; clamp connections present, (Guzman for P. callosa)

Spore deposit:
dark purple brown

Notes:
Guzman(1) examined species of what he called Psilocybe callosa from BC, OR, WA, Chile, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Germany, Netherlands, Sweden, and the United Kingdom. Stamets gives the range of P. strictipes as the Pacific Northwest, Chile, Czech Republic, France, Germany, Netherlands, Slovakia, Sweden, United Kingdom, and Siberia (Russia). The original description was from OR. There are collections under P. strictipes from WA and OR at the University of Washington.

EDIBILITY

estimated moderately to highly active, but analyses not available, probably low in psilocin because of limited blueing reaction

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Psilocybe callosa (Fr. ex Fr.) Quel.
Psilocybe semilanceata var. microspora Singer
Psilocybe semilanceata var. obtusa Bon.