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THE LIFE CYCLE OF A MUSHROOM

Approximately 100,000 species of fungi are known. Wild psychoactive mushrooms, known scientifically as basidiomycetes (club fungi), are the fruiting bodies of saprophytes, meaning they obtain their food by direct absorption of nutrients from the soil or other medium, such as the decomposing manure of ruminants or the decaying leaves, twigs and wood of plants. The nutrients are dissolved by enzymes, and then absorbed through the fungi’s thin cell walls. Since they lack chlorophyll, they always feed on live or dead matter bringing about the decay and decomposition of all organic matter on our planet.
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LIFE CYCLE OF A MUSRHOOM. Drawn by Grant Trowbridge.

Most fungi reproduce by spores (fig. 1), tiny particles of protoplasm enclosed in sturdy cell walls. A common mushroom produces 10 billion or more spores on its fruiting body, while giant puffballs produce as many as several trillion. Spores are the seeds of a mushroom. They are found on the gill plates on the underside of the cap of a gilled mushroom. When the mushroom cap has fully opened and separated from its veil, the mature spores are dispersed by the wind or fall directly beneath the mushroom. Various small animals and insects, notably dung beetles and millipedes, feed on mushrooms and are instrumental in spore distribution. When the spores land on a habitable medium, they germinate and form hyphae, which grow and spread under the surface into many small fine silk-like hairs that collectively form the mushroom mycelium (spawn). The mycelium grows, radiating outward into large, occasionally vast mats that permeate the material in which it is growing. When conditions are correct, the mycelium fruits and a mushroom appear above the ground. One primary medium is the manure of four-legged ruminants such as cattle, buffalo, horses and sheep. Additionally some groups of insects are known to cultivate mushrooms as food (ambrosia beetles, tropical leaf-cutting ants, and certain groups of termites).(Encarta, 2000).

WORLDWIDE DISTRIBUTION OF TRYPTAMINE-CONTAING MUSHROOMS

Mushrooms come in many different sizes, shapes and colors and the mushrooms under discussion here are those capable of producing altered states of consciousness brought on by the alkaloids psilocine and psilocybine. Mushrooms with these properties are referred to as, hallucinogenic, narcotic, magic, sacred, psychedelic, psychoactive, entheogenic and neurotropic. They have a great diversity and a large world distribution and in 1957, only seven species were known to the world. However, numerous species of neurotropic mushrooms have since been identified.

More than 180 species of fungi are recognized as containing the tryptamine alkaloids psilocine and/or psilocybine. They are Agaricales and include the genera Psilocybe (117 species), Gymnopilus (13 species), Panaeolus (7 species), Copelandia (12 species), Hypholoma (6 species), Pluteus (6 species), Inocybe (6 species), Conocybe (4 species), and Agrocybe, Galerina and Mycena (one each). Concerning the distribution of Psilocybe, the majority of the species are found in the subtropical humid forests of Mexico and New Guinea. Mexico has the highest number of neurotropic fungi, with 76 species), of which 44 belong to Psilocybe (39 % of the world).

Neurotropic mushrooms have been identified as far north as Alaska and Siberia in the northern hemisphere and as far south as Chile, Australia, and New Zealand in the southern hemisphere. They gro wild from California in the western United States of North America to China and Japan, and from sea level to the high mountan regions up to 4,000 m elevation (e.g. Psilocybe aztecorum in high mountains of Mexico at 4000 m elevation). As Gartz (1996) has pointed out, "The mushrooms occur in abundance wherever mycologists abound" (Guzmán, Allen & Gartz, 2000).

Although neurotropic fungi occur worldwide, knowledge of their distribution is still poorly developed. When they were first rediscovered and documented (Heim, 1956a, 1956b; Singer, 1949), for a time it was beleived that they occurred only in Mexico. Later, numerous species were found in Nprth and South America, Europe, Siberia, southwestern Asia and Japan (Singer & Smith, 1958). Guzmán, in his 1983 monograph on the genus Psilocybe showed distribution in all the continents. Recently, Allen & Merlin (1992) and Guzmán (1995) described new species Psilocybe in the U.S.A., Mexico, Colombia, Puerto Rico, Spain, Thailand and New Zealand. Gartz et al. (1995) and Stamets and Gartz (1995) reported new species from South Africa and the U.S.A., respectively, confirming the broad distribution of these peculiar fungi. In this way it seems that the diversity, ecological and geographical distribution of the neurotropic fungi is so vast and complex, that Guzmán, Allen and Gartz (2000) decided to publish a check-list of the known species and their distribution throughout the world and presented a map of that distribution (fig. 2).

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Fig. 2. DISTRIBUTION MAP.
Courtesy of Dr. Gastón Guzmán of the Instituto de Ecologia, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico.
Today we lack records of neurotropic fungi from several parts of the world, including Russia, Mongolia, Arabia and Turkey, and many regions of Africa or the Middle East, but this is not to say they don’t exist. Kmagic mushrooms enjoy growing popularity amongst young teenagers in Russia, Africa and Israel, where western influence brings knowledge of their existence. There are no presently known records of wild Psilocybe from Korea, and Hawaii,. Enen in the U. S. A., mycological research is somewhat limited in several states, such as Arizona, Colorado, Illinois, Maryland, Vermont, Massachusetts, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania, where there are no records of neurotropic species of Psilocybe. Most recently, two new species have been docymented in Georgia, Psilocybe weilii and Psilocybe atlantis and a new species are now reported from Czeckoslovakia (Psilocybe arcana) and Cambodia (psilocybe angkoria, sp. Nov).