Summary:
Features include 1) a hygrophanous, reddish brown to dark ochraceous brown, viscid, striate cap with a gelatinous peelable cap skin, when young appendiculate with whitish veil remnants, 2) gills that are grayish brown or brown to dark brown-violet and somewhat mottled to almost black, with whitish edges, 3) a whitish to brownish stem with the upper part silky to floccose fibrillose or erect-scaly, 4) growth on dung of cows and horses, and 5) microscopic characters including large, more or less elliptic spores. The description is from Guzman(1) except where noted.

Gills:
broadly adnate; grayish umber or brownish to dark brown-violet, "somewhat mottled to almost black, edges whitish"; edges somewhat floccose, (Guzman(1)), broadly adnate and with a decurrent tooth, 18-22 reaching stem, broad, 5-7 subgills between neighboring gills; light brown when young, soon dark violet-brown, (Breitenbach)

Stem:
(1)2-4(5)cm x (0.1)0.2-0.3(0.4)cm, equal or sometimes narrowing downward, hollow or stuffed; whitish to brownish; silky to floccose-fibrillose or subsquarrulose [with somewhat erect small scales], principally at top, with white mycelial mat at base, (Guzman(1)), 2-5cm x 0.1-0.3cm, at times somewhat widened toward base or top, often bent, solid becoming hollow; "white-fibrillose or pruinose on a gray-brown background, base sometimes white-tomentose, elastic", (Breitenbach)

Veil:
rudimentary with white fibrils, no ring but veil remnants on cap margin at first

Odor:
none or slightly musty or fungus-like

Taste:
none or slightly musty or fungus-like

Microscopic spores:
spores (13)14-18(22) x (6.5)7.7-8.8(9.9) microns, subelliptic or elliptic (not lentiform or hexagonal) both in face and side view, ochraceous brown or dark yellow-brown, thick-walled (0.5-1.0 micron), with broadly truncate germ pore, up to 1.5 microns wide, [presumably smooth]; basidia 4-spored, rarely 2-spored, 33-38 x 12-14 microns, sterigmata 4-4.5 microns long, colorless, "subclavate or clavate, with a median or more superior constriction"; pleurocystidia absent or rare near edges and resembling cheilocystidia, cheilocystidia abundant, forming a sterile band, 33-40(50) x 8.8-10(12) microns, colorless, "obclavate, fusoid-ventricose or sublageniform", with a subcylindric, long and flexuous [wavy] neck 13-22 x 2-3(4) microns broad; clamp connections present, (Guzman(1)), spores 16.1-20.9 x 9.6-11.8 microns, +/- elliptic, smooth, thick-walled, with germ pore; basidia 4-spored, 30-35 x 11-13 microns, cylindric, somewhat constricted in middle, no basal clamp connections seen; pleurocystidia absent, cheilocystidia sparse, 35-50 x 8-10 microns, narrowly lageniform; clamp connections not seen in cap cuticle, (Breitenbach)

Spore deposit:
purpuraceous black or dark violaceous brown, (Guzman(1)), dark brown (Breitenbach)

Notes:
Guzman(1) examined specimens from Greenland, Argentina, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Finland, France, Norway, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom (England, Scotland). There is a collection from Saturna Island BC by Paul Kroeger deposited at the University of British Columbia and reported in Guzman(4) which also mentions a Guzman & Trappe report from an alpine meadow in WA.

EDIBILITY

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Psilocybe subcoprophila (Britzelm.) Sacc.