![]() ![]() These mushrooms are found under trees and are much more “robust” than liberty caps,” says Rockefeller. The Inocybe species can be extremely toxic. Because they aren’t “super common, don’t look a whole lot like liberty caps and don’t occur in large enough quantities to cause poisoning,” he says, Pholiotina rugosa poisonings are thankfully extremely rare. These mushrooms, says Rockefeller, are “very fragile and more orange overall, especially the gills and spore print”. Pholiotina rugosa (also known as the common conecap) is a deadly species of mushroom that could be confused for a liberty cap. “Poisonings from picking mushrooms that look like liberty caps but are different species are rare because most of the lookalikes aren’t particularly toxic,” he says. Thankfully, there aren’t a lot of poisonous mushrooms that look like liberty caps. That being said, Rockefeller notes that “a beginner who hasn't identified many mushrooms could confuse hundreds of species with. If you’ve been identifying and picking mushrooms for years, it’s much less likely that you’ll confuse liberty caps with any other varieties. “The gills are never any other colour.”Īs Rockefeller says, “lookalikes are in the eye of the beholder”. “Liberty caps also have a purple spore print,” meaning the gills start out cream-coloured in young specimens and turn purple – or dark brown – as the spores mature. “It’s long, white, flexible, relatively durable and fibrous,” he continues. He adds that the wiggly stem is also especially distinctive. “Which means that when fresh, a thin gelatinous film can be peeled off of the cap,” he says. Rockefeller adds that liberty caps also have a separable gelatinous pellicle. Does it have a wiggly – as opposed to a completely straight – stem?” “Is it five to 10 centimetres tall? Is it either creamy-coloured or brown? Does it have dark brown gills?. “I have a few questions that I like to ask myself,” he says. Thankfully, though, liberty caps do have some key characteristics that differentiate them from other species.Īccording to Jack, some of the first things he’ll look out for when identifying liberty caps are their size and shape. ![]() On the other end of the spectrum, you could end up picking non-toxic mushrooms that don’t have any psychedelic properties, leaving you with a tasty, but ultimately wasted, crop. The number one danger of foraging for mushrooms is stumbling upon poisonous lookalikes, which could be deadly. Rockefeller says that liberty caps never occur in forests, in wood chips, or directly from manure. They usually pop up after it’s been raining, so it’s best to go on the first dry day after a spell of rain. According to Dr Nuke, they mostly grow in uncultivated and untouched grounds, so the countryside is often your best bet. ![]() Liberty caps are often found in grassy fields where animals, mainly sheep, graze – this is why you might hear people saying they grow near manure. ![]() But at the same time, we know some people are going to forage for shrooms no matter what, so we enlisted the advice of three experts – Alan Rockefeller, an American mycologist, Dr Russell Newcombe (aka Dr Nuke), a leading harm reduction specialist and author of one of the first magic mushroom harm reduction guides, and Mushies founder and seasoned picker Jack Woodhouse. Secondly, we would never advise or encourage anybody who wasn’t an expert to go mushroom picking, as some varieties are poisonous and potentially deadly. Now, it’s important for us to say that, first of all, it’s illegal to possess psilocybin, which is a Class A drug in the UK. It’s around this time of year when people flock to the countryside to stock up on liberty caps, which can grow in huge quantities all over the place. The most common is the liberty cap, and they grow in the UK between September and December. It can be easy to think of magic mushrooms like any other drug – cultivated in a faraway land, or even in a lab in someone’s basement – but the UK actually has a number of native Psilocybe species which grow in the wild. From the hit Netflix documentary Fantastic Fungi to more scientific research into the mental health benefits of magic mushrooms and, of course, the microdosing boom, magic mushrooms are pretty much everywhere right now. ![]()
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