Summary:
{See also Blue-green Stropharia Table.} Features include 1) a viscid, peelable cap that is whitish with azure to bluish green tinges, fading to straw or cream colored, 2) bluish green flesh that fades, 3) adnate pale fawn to purplish gills, 4) a bluish green to azure blue to straw-colored stem that is pruinose-flocculose particularly toward the top, 5) preference for wetland areas, and 6) a purplish brown spore deposit. Stamets says that Stropharia pseudocyanea (Desmazieres) Morgan was transferred to Psilocybe along with Stropharia aeruginosa and Stropharia caerulea by Noordeloos in 1995: the Stamets description of Psilocybe pseudocyanea (Desmazieres: Fries) Noordeloos is given here. Redhead found acanthocytes in the type of Pholiota subcaerulea Smith & Hesler, and no significant differences from Stropharia pseudocyanea, so that he includes it with this species.

Cap:
0.8-2cm across, initially obtusely conic with incurved margin, soon convex and usually obtusely umbonate to subumbonate; somewhat hygrophanous, eye blue to sky blue in buttons, becoming glaucous to glaucous sky blue and sometimes pale brownish centrally, fading in areas to greenish glaucous; viscid, opaque, the margin with minute, ephemeral, whitish to glaucous, floccose, hanging veil remnants, (Redhead), 1-3cm across, "conic-convex, expanding to acutely to bluntly umbonate"; "whitish with azure to bluish green tinges, fading to straw or cream colored"; "viscid from a separable gelatinous pellicle", margin adorned with partial veil remnants, (Stamets)

Flesh:
colored as cap, (Redhead), "bluish green, fading to azure, then pale bluish green" and eventually straw-colored, (Stamets)

Gills:
adnexed, moderately spaced, moderately sized to moderately broad, with up to 3 tiers of subgills; whitish to buff becoming hazel-tinted when old, edges whitish; edges minutely crenulate [scalloped], (Redhead), adnate; pale fawn to purplish; with tooth-like edges, (Stamets)

Stem:
2.1-6cm x 0.13-0.22cm, "equal or sometimes with a slightly swollen base", hollow, fibrous; colored as cap; dry, minutely floccose scaly up to a median or superior, distinct to indistinct ring zone when in prime condition, finely powdered and striate at top, with "prominent white mycelial strands and mycelium basally", (Redhead), 3.5-7cm x 0.2-0.5cm, equal, slim, flexuous [wavy], soft, easily breaking; bluish green to azure blue to straw-colored, pruinose-flocculose [with easily removed pruinose or cottony tufts] particularly toward top, (Stamets)

Veil:
cap margin with minute, ephemeral, whitish to glaucous, floccose, hanging veil remnants, stem scaly up to a median or superior, distinct to indistinct ring zone when in prime condition, (Redhead), partial veil membranous, adorning cap margin, and leaving a membranous ring on stem that degrades into a ring zone (Stamets)

Odor:
not distinctive (Redhead), usually rather strong, peppery, (Buczacki)

Taste:
not distinctive (Redhead)

Microscopic spores:
spores 8.2-9.5 x 4.8-5.5 microns, narrowly almond-shaped to oval, "smooth, with a slightly thickened wall and a minute germ pore or thin apical area"; basidia 4-spored, 26.5-28 x 6.5-7.0 microns, cylindric-clavate, with clamp connection; pleurocystidia 39-42 x 9-10 microns, "only slightly projecting, obtusely clavate to mucronate or rostrate, with a central refractive grainy body, the walls thin, smooth", cheilocystidia 29-37 x 5-8 microns, "mostly subcapitate to capitate and narrowly ventricose, the neck sometimes slightly undulating", thin-walled, smooth, with homogeneous contents, colorless, (Redhead), spores 7-9 x 4-5 microns, elliptic; basidia 4-spored, cheilocystidia 24-44 x 4-8 x 4-5 microns at apex when narrowing or 6-12 microns when swollen, capitate-clavate to lageniform capitate, (Stamets)

Spore deposit:
purplish brown (Stamets), spores on annulus of Pholiota subcaerulea said to be pale cinnamon brown, (Smith(3))

Notes:
Collections were examined from BC, OR, and AB, (Redhead(9)). There is a J. Ammirati collection from WA at the University of Washington. Collections of Pholiota subcaerulea were examined from WA, OR, and ID, (Smith(3)).

EDIBILITY

activity unknown, due caution advised, (Stamets)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Stropharia albocyanea (Desm.) Quel.