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A small brown mushroom collected at a University of Florida biological station is the first known to make both psilocybin and amatoxins, a family of compounds that includes some of the deadliest poisons in fungi.
Researchers have dubbed the species Galerina indica the “dark magic mushroom.” The nickname is less a flourish than a problem of identification: the mushroom is hard to separate from other little brown species, even for a trained expert, according to the University of Florida.
A First Florida Report from a Station Survey
Andrew Kunik found the mushroom while documenting fungi at the UF/IFAS Ordway Swisher Biological Station. He was then an undergraduate working in the lab of Matthew E. Smith, a professor in the UF/IFAS Department of Plant Pathology, Florida’s state mycologist and the study’s senior author…