Talk:Psilocybe

Removed reference to illegal drug trade from psilocybe cubensis since this mushrom is legal in most parts of the world as long as it isn't prepared (dried).

This article is a stub, most of the information is incomplete or downright inaccurate, and the list of species at the end of this article serves absolutely no useful purpose. This article is in need of a complete and total rewrite, something I hope to provide within the month. - Peter G Werner, June 23 2005.

Lists are ok, don't get rid of that. it is a list of the various species, whether there are articles for them or not. --Heah (talk) 07:04, 24 May 2005 (UTC)

List of Species

I really feel like this list is just kind of a random element - an overly large, yet still incomplete listing of Psilocybe species, with little if any contextual information indicating whether the species are hallucinogenic, commonly found, etc. The point of an encyclopedia is to distill the best of current knowledge on a topic down to information that is useful and informative to the general reader - a guarantee you a long list of species names with no contextual information is little, if any, use to the general reader.

Also, the list is more or less a direct copy of the Psilocybe species listed on "A List of the Known Psilocybian Mushrooms" by John W. Allen, found on Erowid.org. That really needs attribution, BTW - otherwise its pretty much an act of plagiarism, even if Wikipedia doesn't have authors per se.

Tell you what I will do when I edit this article - I'll create a separate article called "List of Psilocybe Species" linked to from the main article, plus I'll update the information to reflect current taxonomy. Doing long lists like this as separate articles seems to be pretty much standard form for Wikipedia.

-- Peter Werner, May 24, 2005

Substantial Rewrite

I forgot to leave an editing note about this, but I did my first substantial rewrite of this article today. Its still not complete, and there are still a number of topics I want to add, but as it stands, the revision covers all the topics found in the previous edit and is far more thorough. More about historical, social, legal, etc aspects as I get to these topics.

I moved the List of Psilocybe species off into its own article.

Peter Werner - 21 Jun 2005

Macroscopic Characteristics

I'd like to see this great section become even tighter maybe with some concrete references for the cited colours, for example for the alleged rust-brown spored psilocybe...never heard of that (though I'm happy to be taught otherwise!), purple-brown to purple-black is usually given as standard spore colour for this genus. Peter, can you cite the rust-brown sporing species? as far as cap colour, it would be good to gather some standard descriptions and give the range in cap colour with some examples. I don't think orange-white is very typical for example, but I'd guess p. azurescens is meant, so one could cite that. --erasurehead

There really is a rust-brown-spored strain of Psilocybe cubensis - google '"red spore" OR "red boy" psilocybe' and you'll see what I'm referring to. Unfortunately, I'm having a harder time coming up with a permanent coherent link about the subject. As for color terminology, I'm using it straight out of Kornerup and Wanscher's "Methuen Handbook of Color" - orange-white is a typical color for Psilocybe (and many other mushrooms for that matter) after hygrophanous fading has occurred. Its one of the many colors that are often referred to as "buff" - kind of a beige color, but tending more into the orange range. --Peter G Werner 05:40, 3 September 2005 (UTC)

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The first paragraph in this article is both poorly constructed and of questionable veracity. Perhaps someone with knowledge of this particular subject can improve it? For example, it is certainly debatable that the Torah/Old Testament refers to psychedelic mushrooms, or psilocybes in particular. --Bumhoolery 06:51, August 26, 2005 (UTC)

Some nutcase keeps vandalizing this article with his odd interpretations of biblical references. If you see these, just revert them out - they're essentially vandalism. --Peter G Werner 05:40, 3 September 2005 (UTC)