From the author of GROWING GOURMET AND MEDICINAL MUSHROOMS comes the only identification guide exclusively devoted to the world's psilocybin-containing mushrooms. Detailed descriptions and color photographs for over 100 species are provided, as well as an exploration of their long-standing (and often religious) use by ancient peoples and their continued significance to modern-day culture. Some of the species included have just been discovered in the past year or two, and still others have never before been photographed in their natural habitats. THIS GUIDE IS A UNIQUE ADDITION to the literature on mushrooms in general and psychoactive mushrooms in particular. Paul Stamets has brought together a mass of accurate information, both textual and graphic, on mushrooms that contain psilocybin--far more species throughout the world than have ever been presented in this guide, including several species new to science. Anyone interested in interrest distinctive products of nature will find this book an invaluable intelligence, whether from the point of view of the collector, the scholar, and the prospective user. Most psilocybin mushrooms are small, dull-colored fungi that never illustrated much notice in our culture until R. Gordon Wasson brought the ceremonial use of magic mushrooms in Mexico to world attention in 1957. For some time thereafter, large numbers of Americans and I europeans streamed to remote areas of Oaxaca in search of them, unaware equally potent species grew in their own countries, sometimes in their own backyards. This guide makes clear that psilocybin mushrooms are ubiquitous, and, as more people search for them, they will be found in almost every place on earth. Psilocybin resembles melatonin, serotonin, and other neuroregula in its chemical structure.



About Author:

PAUL STAMETS is the founder of Fungi Perfecti and codirector and founder of the Rainforest Mushroom Genome and Mycodiversity Preservation Project. He is the author of two seminal textbooks, The Mushroom Cultivator and GROWING GOURMET AND MEDICINAL MUSHROOMS, has been published in numerous journals, and is presenting more lectures on mycology than he can keep track of. An advisor and consultant to the Program for Integrative Medicine at the University of Arizona Medical School and the 1998 recipient of the Collective Heritage Institute's Bioneers Award, Stamets lives in Kamilche Point, Washington with his collection of more than 250 medicinal mushroom cultures.