Psilocybe galindoi var georgia (atl#7) and some agar fun

[Beast]

Ok, so you may recall from a past thread that I have been working with Psilocybe galindoi var georgia (atl#7), my new species of choice.

What I'm planning on with this thread is to document the fruiting of two more quart jars of wbs, as well as my 1st adventures with agar. Bear in mind, I'm still half-assing things, no flowhood, no glovebox, no schmuv. Might change my mind about that in a bit.

Its been about 3 months since that thread, and what I've done since then is observe those agar plates I made to gain a general idea of what they will do, if left alone. Will contams spontaneously appear? Will they dry out? what? ... as it was my first attempt in making up the agar plates and all. So very few contamed, and only after I took them out of the fridge, and out of the ziplock I was storing them in. The only problem observed was a good deal of condensation remained, like .5mL or so.

So I took 10 plates, peeled off the parafilm, and tilted the plate sideways opening the lid just a tiny lil bit to let the drips of water out. Followed by peroxide dipped tissue transfers and spore swipes of a few species, mostly old old prints from 4-5 years ago.

Granted, the plates that nothing happened on also ended up contamming, but out of 10 plates I have 4 with healthy mycellium growing.

P1010508.JPG

I'm stoked on the multispore of the galindoi, looks like there's sclerotia forming under the mycellium already! Also the tissue transfers of galindoi, you can see that this species is very resistant to contams, look at it repelling those chunks of trich!

P1010509.JPG P1010510.JPG

So I've got some transfering and isolation to do with those plates, will update later on that progress...
__________________________________________________

Also, from that previous thread, all those old grain jars died, and the lcs didn't take off either for some reason. No matter, I still had a quart of wbs fully colonized and loaded with stones. So, I harvested the stones, and put the rest of the spawn into some chicken trays, lidded em for a week, then cased with verm/coir, gave a good spray, put polyfilled holes in the lids, and within a couple days, mushrooms!!!
P1010503.JPG P1010505.JPG P1010507a.jpg

[lysergic]

good luck dude


I'm telepathically sending you our good harvest vibes

[golly]

Neat project Beast..!
Pretty good for open air..Are u going to try and transfer the infected plate or watch the battle..?

[Beast]

I guess I haven't decided as of yet... I was thinking I've watched the battle long enough. Seems to me I can do both, transfer some of those pieces out that haven't come into direct contact, and leave the others to see what happens. The pan cyan myc is definitely getting moved, and I'd like to try and get some isolates from that multispore plate of the ps. galindii, but the shitake tissue xfer seems to be doing good, I'd about given up on it then pow!, no visible contams so i'll let it grow out a bit more then transfer some bits to new plates as well as perhaps a jar or two.

Hopefully this next round of plates won't have so much condensation, not sure what it was that cause it in the first place. Maybe just need to ante up on the agar.

As for the current set of fruits, I'm guessing the small size is due to lack of nutrients as I didn't spawn to anything. As the sclerotias that I've found have the seeds they are growing in, like within them sometimes, I'm a little wary of growing sclerotia in any sort of dung. lol. Dunno why that is, we eat the mushrooms that grow off the dung..

This is an interesting species, with both sclerotia as well as fruitbodies being produced. Seems that the fruits are often growing from sclerotia. And that sclerotia production continues, even if the majority of sclerotia is harvested b4 spawning to a tray. Haven't tried not harvesting the sclerotia yet. Should be interesting to see what if any strain variations appear out of the multispore, assuming I'm able to get it that far.

[Beast]

So, here we are a week later, Lysergic and Mydarling, thank you for the good harvest vibes, they came through and then some!

[lysergic]

Those look ready to go!

[mycowarrier]

Nice work and reseach Beast. Glad to see someone else that has found those rotisery chicken containers to be great Micro-grow boxes. I save all mine for the same.

[buteo]

AWESOME!!!!

[Shroomette]

Those are looking awesome. Great job!

[vinz]

damn beast those are some pretty looking mushrooms!!! how hard would you rate them in terms of growing?

[warriorsoul]

nice galindoi

[Beast]

Thanks for the positive comments everyone!

Vinz, I'd rate these as being pretty easy to grow. I wasn't planning on getting flushes like that. The tray on the left yielded 20 grams fresh mushrooms after those photos were taken (couldn't get the lid back on without mashing mushrooms). I was mainly interested in just harvesting stones from quart jars of spawn when I began my investigations into this species, but figured why not? with going ahead and trying to get mushrooms too. I bet I get another good harvest of sclerotia from the trays after its all said and done, too.

Those two trays are just the colonized wild bird seed that was left over from harvesting sclerotia from a single quart jar, that was about 6 months old. (the jar I harvested sclerotia from 3 months earlier had less sclerotia but not by much) I spread the spawn out in the trays, and let them mend with normal lids that only have a little hole up top, for about a week or so, mabye two. They were looking kinda ugly and had a bit of mycopiss I drained off the side when I cased them and added the polyfilled holes to the lids, then gave them a good spray. Had fruits within days. The casing layer is a mix of vermiculite and coir, btw. Kept at room temp, no special setting, my thermostat is usually below 70 and often a window open... no special container either, other than the rotisery chicken containers, often they spend a day stuffed into some cabinet when company is over

Yeah, twisted and lifted and the fruits came right off, made a new thin casing layer over the top of everything and gave it a light spray. We didn't harvest the other tray, not enough to block the lid getting put back on

[mydarling]

beast, if u incubate your plates upside down, the condensation will collect on the lid instead

and those look like pans!!!!!! cool looking mushrooms. it's neat that this species makes both sclerotia and fruits at the same time. i wouldn't eat sclerotia grown in poo though, either

[vinz]

oh shit! so the seeds you used are "after harvest"?! oh man im definitely going to try this.. the last batch of stones i made i just threw away all the grass seed! i have several bags going in at a couple of months old already.. once it hits 6+months i really really hope i remember this thread! haha did you have any way of harvesting it in a special 'clean' way? like did you use gloves or something?

[TastyBeverage]

Very nice!

I like that you recycled the chicken trays, lol

[Mandrake]

Wonderful shrooms! In my opinion those are cutest (If you can possibly call mushrooms cute) mushrooms I have ever seen!

I will most definately be growing these when I get a chance!!!

[Beast]

Yep that's what I did, Vinz, but I didn't go out of my way to be clean.

I sorted the stones out with bare hands, no gloves, though I'm sure I washed my hands sometime soon before that...

I even left the spawn sitting in a open bowl for a few hours...

And other than the boiled water used to initially hydrate the coir brick, the casing layer of coir and verm was unpasteurized and applied by ungloved hands.

[vinz]

thats really good to hear beast! lol
love the grow!

[teesus]

Originally Posted by Beastmaster

I sorted the stones out with bare hands, no gloves, though I'm sure I washed my hands sometime soon before that...

I even left the spawn sitting in a open bowl for a few hours...

the same i did and it worked. i think atl#7 is the most contam resistent mushroom i have ever worked with.
your tray looks very healthy!

[Indonesia]

nice work Beastmaster!

I am new to ATL #7 and I was wondering if you wouldn't mind taking a look at a pic of mycelium running on agar plates and let me know what u think. I just want to make sure it is mycelium.. lol.

Since this pic my foaf transfered healthy mycelium from one of the plates into other plates, and left one original plate to make sclerotia b4 transfer. Foaf is now seeing a tiny brown chunk (hopefully sclerotia) in one section of a plate and thinking about transferring.

I am wondering what culturing route to take if foafs objective is ultimately stones first, and fruit secondary? Better to clone a fruit or better to isolate stone producing substrains?

[Beast]

Yep, that looks like mycellium to me.

It seems to produce sclerotia right off the bat in the petri dish, so lumpy stuff under the mycellium that is a sort of caramel brown color is what that is.

The stuff that I've been working with is a clone from a fruit. But it has been producing sclerotia just fine.

If you think about it, the genetic tissue from the stones would be the same as obtained from the fruits, given that this is already a culture from a clone.

It seems to me that the natural life cycle of a sclerotia producing mushroom is to both produce sclerotia as well as fruitbodies with spores. Keeping a clone of yourself hidden in the cellar is no way to spread your genes, or contribute to your species' gene pool, but it is a good backup incase you get plowed by a truck or eaten by a slug, and that's basically what sclerotia is. So maybe the sclerotia is a way of coming back the next year, like a perennial? This would also explain the contam resistance, as the mushroom would need to develop such a trait to survive year to year, rather than relying on spore distribution to regenerate.

Sorry for the tangent, what was the question again? Oh yeah culturing route...

The sclerotia producing mushrooms are pretty uncommon in the hobby cultivation. Questions such as yours are certainly worth experimenting around. Starting with multispore, you could try and isolate some mycellium in successive plates, then grow the various isolates out on some grain and then spawn to trays and fruit. Or harvest the stones first. There's a question.

• Does leaving the sclerotia in with the spawn influence fruiting activity for heavier flushes? Or does removing the spawn have that effect?

So then you might find that one of your isolates maybe produces stones better than another, or maybe one fruits more prolifically. Once you've got fruitbodies as well, you can take clones from both large stones as well as large fruits and see if you can get some better results on your subsequent harvests.

• Another question sclerotia growers ponder is what influences stone production? A hard, non-nutritive surface? So then does putting pieces of plastic or glass into the spawn cause the formation of additional sclerotia?

Just like any other species, the possibility of domestication and strain development exists. Maybe someday, just like with P. cubensis, we will be seeing albinos or super stones or who knows?

[vinz]

hey beast did you rehydrate the wbs substrate in any way before you cased it?

[mydarling]

beast, that's the best/most informative info i've been able to find on sclerotia here (in my albeit limited searches). sclerotia perplex me. thanks for the tid bits

[Beast]

vinz: I didn't rehydrate the wbs until after I cased it. It sat in the bowl, open air for a few hours while I hung out in chat, and weighed up the sclerotia, sorry don't remember how much I harvested a couple hundred grams or so...

Spread the stuff out in the two trays, put the lids on and it sat there for a week at least. I'm just a slacker I guess. Wait, what I mean to say is that I'm testing the neglect, and contam resistance of this strain, perhaps due to my 'lifestyle'.

So anyways, I think I mentioned the casing mixture, but once I spread it out on the mended and mycopissed mycellium, I gave it a real good spray down with a mister, plus the casing itself was at field capacity.

mydarling: I'm honored by your compliment, certainly there's more comprehensive info around here.

[vinz]

thanks beast! i agree with darling here
this thread has very good info on sclerotia and the mushroom that grows off it! hell yeah!

[boomershroom]

Good job man those look prime.

[Beast]

Well, I'm glad we're all learning something then

There are a few tidbits in the archives about sclerotia production (just follow the glossary link), but its all geared around Psilocybe mexicana. Still some good advice in there, to include the use of popcorn (would be easier to spot grains in the stones), as well as dunking the grain after harvesting the stones and returning the grains to the jar for more flushes of stones. I wonder about jar size as well. Decreasing area to volume ratio might influence more stone production, as they seem to like to form against glass or the casing layer, reportedly.

Could be different species produce sclerotia differently, however. There's some pretty massive stones in those archived threads

[seedlessstinky1]

Extremely interesting mushroom. They sure do resemble a pan when grown to a mature shroom. Very shiny too. Potency report tonight?

[Beast]

The jury is still out on that...

I've eaten 4 and 7 grams of stones, and those were on par with similar amounts of cubensis and ps cyanescens that I've experimented with in the past.

Two major differences:

1. I've found cubensis to be more 'loopy' - I'm more likely to get pinned to the chair/couch feeling like my soul is getting spun around on the inside of a sphere of death.
2. With the heavy doses of sclerotia, myself and companions(took about half as much as me) all reported feeling like 'we were drinking from a cosmic firehose of love'. the other descriptive: 'standing under a waterfall of cosmic love'. I've done ecstacy a couple times, and though its been a few years, and this wasn't as intense as that, I'd say it was a very similar sensation. Not as speedy though, if you turned on the techno I'd probably not start auto dancing

With the fruitbodies, that one tray yielded 19 grams of fresh mushrooms.

They dry out fast, no dessicant or fan. Within just a couple hours, I'd lost about 5 grams of weight. I estimated a 5 gram dose (which I suspect would be about .5 if that once dry), and put it in some soup:



I played Left 4 Dead for the duration of the trip. Things got kinda intense, that's a well made game, lots of dischordant environmental sounds, plus Zombie hordes!! lol Stuff was moving if I looked at carpet or wood panel, but I wasn't getting taken away on any trips. I did have some weird time displacement stuff happen when i'd get up and move, go look in the mirror and see if I can see inside the giant pupils, etc.


The next night, a friend was over to visit, walked/jogged 6 miles in a nicotiene fit (he was on day 2 of trying to quit cigs after like 15 yrs of smoking packs a day). So I fixed up some broccoli beef stirfry and rice, and chopped up the remaining mushrooms and added them in during the final bit of cooking. Friend was a little trepidatious as his last trip was no fun, being in the presence of a Tweaker while tripping is almost as bad as being a tweaker, ime. I reassured him that we were only eating about .7 grams apiece, assuming we get same ratio, and that it should be very mild.

We had a great evening of watching adult swim and playing darts. Dude's dart accuracy was up like 200% like putting all three darts in the bull, etc. I attributed it to him being in starvation must kill cig and get what his body needs type of mode, but like TM theorizes in Food of the Gods, small doses of psilocybin increase awareness, which could have been a contributing factor towards human evolution. Either way dude was killing me on darts, though come to think of it I won most of the games, he'd start off with a killer lead and then I'd catch up. After all, I had psilocybin enhanced reflexes too.

Yesterday he was commenting on what a great lil psychedelic session we had, no carted off to trippy dimensions echoing tweaker ramblings, just some cool wavies, and a pleasant feeling, and a good time. He was still off the cigarettes, laughing about the 5 lil threads of tobacco he found next to an ashtray that he's been saving, lol.

[Beast]

So, I never got around to doing anything else after my last post. But the mushrooms went ahead and flushed again anyways!

Also the second tray that was just starting last week probably should have been picked a few days ago, there's some uglies in there. They do seem a little dry, but weight at harvest was half that of the 1st tray. Bioassay is underway so we'll see how a slightly heavier dose is.

Anyways, here's some pics, I know how tedious reading things is...
The first pic is from the tray that had less fruits on it last week. The two after that are of the tray that I harvested from last week and haven't touched since.
P1010536a.jpg P1010538a.jpg P1010539a.jpg

[Beast]

As I removed the casing layer ,I found then middle had a 1" piece of trich growing in there. I guess this species isn't totally immune to the mean green

Anyways, as I was removing the infected stuff and the old casing layer, I found a bunch of sclerotia! go figure, lol. I didn't know what to do, so I just removed the obvious ones that were sticking up into the casing layer or near the contam and patched the thing back together, recased it and put it to bed with a good spraydown.

27 grams of stones! ugly lil bastids eh! There's still some in there, and I haven't even touched that other tray! I was so excited I just had to come in here and post about it, lol.



Man, I'm really torn. Will removing the stones influence further flushes or is leaving them in the better thing to do. Guess I'll find out...
P1010542.jpg

[cap]

this is just so friggin cool beasty thanks for sharin these wonderful breakhrough experiments with us!
being outta the loop and in and out of hospitals for months ive all but missed this variety altogether!
youre representation here has sparked a flame in me...u know the one i gotta check these out under the scope for SURE
be good fam

[mydarling]

sounds like a very pleasant trip from these guys. i'd like to try them someday, the cubes can wear me out from time to time....

[Beast]

Yeah these aren't anywhere near as exhausting as cubensis. I generally feel rejuvenated the next day.

P1010548.JPG
Harvested another 15 grams (wet) from the first tray. Left the stones in there, recased and sprayed. The other tray that had the trich in it that I removed the stones from is still in recovery mode. I'm starting to think the sclerotia are where the fruits come from. Perhaps in order to start fruiting again, the mycellium needs to form more sclerotia/nodules?

P1010546.JPG .................................................. P1010547.JPG

If you observe from the top view, the mushrooms seem to be originating from some common points. But when picking the mushrooms, out of that whole tray there was only one cluster, one of the newer ones, that was actually a cluster. All those other bunches are just closely grouped.

I've noticed that the base of the stems of these fruit bodies tend to have a tiny little root off the end, I think this reaches down to the sclerotia, as that is the true base of the cluster. This is my theory, nothing more, I have yet to dig up a cluster and observe the connections between it and the fruitbodies.

[Beast]

These things just keep on going. This big flush is on the tray that I dug out the trich and 30 grams of sclerotia from. Thought it was going to be delayed. Pretty sure I soaked both of em pretty good, but the other tray seems to have dried out a bit.

I'm starting to think as long as I keep up on the watering I should be able to get quite a few stones and fruits from these trays.



P1010566a.jpg P1010567a.jpg P1010568a.jpg P1010569a.jpg

[eatyualive]

nicely done!

[Umbo]

Yeah really informative thread, thank you, love stuff about sclerotia.
I imagine that stones would keep awhile in the fridge, but
do you know Beastmaster, (or anyone) if you can dehydrate
them and rehydrate them at a later date, plant them and get
more flushes of mushrooms?

[Beast]

do you know Beastmaster, (or anyone) if you can dehydrate
them and rehydrate them at a later date, plant them and get
more flushes of mushrooms?

Well, there have been people who've revived old dessicated mycellial tissue on agar. ...And that's basically what sclerotia is, even more so as it seems to be designed to be a genetic storage point for perennial flushes of mushrooms?

The do dry out, and they can be rehydrated. When it comes to dosing dry sclerotia, its almost essential. I put em in a half pint jar with some water and mead and let em sit for about 6 hours or so, by which time they were not as tough and could be chomped and gulped down. The resultant water/wine mix with floaties of verm/wbs bits was not the best thing to wash it down but it felt more magical than the stones. Probably was. Cold water(w/ 15% alc) extract anyone?

I've been thinking, since its about time to refresh the substrate in a few of my terrariums that maybe planting some sclerotia in there with the worm castings and coir could produce some appreciable results...

[MrChen]

Very well done Beast. Inspiring to say the least!

[mydarling]

archive material

[Zozo]

Very interesting and nice thread

peace
zozo

[warriorsoul]

I originally pointed this out in a thread awhile ago.
The mushroom was named after Mr. Carlos Galindo Arias and his family, who did work for Guzman.
It wouldn't make much sense to take the O out of Galindo if your trying to honor his name. I believe this was an error on Guzmans part.

It is one of the many east coast active mushroom descriptions i have worked on.. I should add some of the sclerotia info..Thanks beast!



Psilocybe galindoi
Scientific classification Kingdom: Fungi
Division: Basidiomycota
Class: Agaricomycetes
Order: Agaricales
Family: Strophariaceae
Genus: Psilocybe
Species: P. galindoi
Binomial name Psilocybe galindoi
Guzman Nova Hedwigia
Psilocybe galindoi mycological characteristics:
gills on hymenium

cap is conical or campanulate

hymenium is adnate

stipe is bare


ecology is saprotrophic

edibility: psychoactive

Psilocybe galindoi is a psychedelic mushroom in the section Mexicana, having psilocybin and psilocin as its main active compounds. It is also known as P. galindii, the mushroom was named in honor of Mr. Carlos Galindo Arias and his family by Dr. Gastón Guzmán‎.
Contents

1 Description

• 2 Distribution and habitat
• 3 External links
• 4 References

Description

• Cap: 1.9 — 2 cm in diameter, conic to campanulate or umbonate, with a very slight papilla, glabrous, even to striate when moist, hygrophanous, brown or yellowish brown fading to pale ochraceous or straw color. Staining blue-green where injured.
• Gills: Adnate, brown to dark purple brown, with whitish edges.
• Stipe: 5 — 6.5 cm x 1 — 2 mm, equal, hollow, no annulus, reddish brown in the middle, darker towards the base with long rhizomorphic strands. Veil inconspicuous, except for some white appressed silky fibrils on the pileus.
• Spores: Dark purple gray in deposit. (8.1)9.6 — 12(14) x 7.1 — 8 µm, subrhomboid in face view or subellipsoid in side view(around 1 µm), yellowish brown, thick walled with a broad germ pore.
• Odor: Farinaceous
• Taste: Farinaceous
• Microscpoic Features: Basidia: 18 — 24 x 7.2 — 9.6 µm, hyaline, 4-spored, ventricose. Pleurocystidia: 14.4 — 21 x 7 — 8.4 µm, hyaline, fusoid-ampullaceous, with short necks.

Distribution and habitat

Psilocybe galindoi is found growing gregarious in soil, at elevation, in tall grass in or near Pinus-Quercus forests in Mexico, most recently in Georgia.

External links

• Sporeworks Psilocybe galindoi gallery
• Mushroomobserver psilocybe galindoi

References

• Guzman, G. The Genus Psilocybe: A Systematic Revision of the Known Species Including the History, Distribution and Chemistry of the Hallucinogenic Species. Beihefte zur Nova Hedwigia Heft 74. J. Cramer, Vaduz, Germany (1983) [now out of print].

[vwguy]

oh man those stones look nice. I guess beastmaster i kind of answered my own question those are what i had in amsterdam.. Oh man i love them. The only way i can discribe my trip is like the poster at spencers with the head and all of the colors exploding from it. thats the way everything looked.. those are nice. i read that you can kinda polish them up a bit. do they darken up or is that a differant kind?


also while i was there in amsterdam they kept their stones in small plastic boxes in the refriderator

[manjotar]

i've never thought of using a chicken box like that! i get one of those damn things every other week! think i'll be saving them from now on...

oh yeah, the sclerotia is pretty damn cool too

[spacecake]

Originally Posted by mydarling

archive material

lol,just wanted to do the same thing...

[dial8]

Damn beast! Luv that shit!

[Beast]

So, other than that first post I bet some of the more astute of you have been wondering where the agar fun is at? Thus, my friends, I do intend to deliver on that promise, and here it is, pictures being worth more than I care to write at this time on the subject, I'll get with the gusto: (click on pics for larger view)

First I'll show the plates that I started this thread with.

Ok, here's the shitake clone I started at the beginning of this thread, the cloned tissue turned dark brown and now looks like somethings growing on it, though the rest of the plate looks really healthy.

How it looked starting out:

Couple close ups of the festering wound: P1010590a.jpg P1010590b.jpg

Also, my first tissue clone of the Psilocybe galindoi var georgia(atl#7) has been doing what appears to be a pretty effective job of fighting off those green contams:

How it looked a month ago: How it looks now: P1010597a.jpg

Ok, this one's pretty cool, I did a swipe of spores from one of the only prints I've made so far from this species, and though I do regret not having transfered any of the isolates b4 they got all mixed up, its been fun watching it grow and the stones form.

The week of germination:

How it looks now,
top view: P1010594a.jpg bottom view with and without backlight: P1010595a.jpg P1010596a.jpg

Remember I'd said I had a problem with wet plates, P1010598a.jpg well, I've moved the remaining plates from the fridge to sitting out on a counter in the kitchen, still in the ziplocks, and they seem to have dried up just a tad. So I went ahead and did a few more transfers, though I'm not sure what's what, I guess I was stoned and figured I'd remember. LMAO, what was I thinking?
I guess this is the only one I'm unsure about: P1010591a.jpg Its either a shitake or an oyster or maybe a hedgehog.

This one is definitely an oyster, I just don't remember if I did one or two, and there's multiple mushrooms in the fridge that could be culprits. Looks like its trying to escape, pressing against the lid:
P1010601a.jpg P1010602a.jpg

Finally, I've saved the best for last, I also did a new tissue transfer of some new fruits from the 2nd or 3rd flush from the chicken trays, and look at that its growing a mushroom already!

P1010603a.jpg P1010604a.jpg

All in all, I'd say this has been a very exciting first attempt with agar plates, much less contams than I expected, and alot more successful growths of mycellium than I expected! Just goes to show that the real gems on this site are to be found in the archives/vaults and a little time, a little studying, a little effort to follow instructions as written and success can be had! Thanks BuckarooBanzai!

[vinz]

damn beast that is some really nice plates you have there! cant wait to see you work out those clones!

[warriorsoul]

Awesome!
I need to update the cap size for galindoi, Guzman lists it at 1.9 - 2.0cm. lol
What are the largest and smallest cap sizes you are getting Beast?

[Beast]

Well, these chicken trays only have the original wbs from the jar as the substrate - those caps are probably averaging right at 1 - 1.5 cm.

However, on my first fruiting attempt, I used a combo of composted manure, castings, and coir (also the substrate was easily 2x as deep as the chicken trays), and most of the caps on those fruits were 3-4 centimeters. (see below link)

http://forums.mycotopia.net/596084-post5.html

Lends credence to these not being the same Psilocybe galindois as the one's found in Mexico, imho. (passing through texas on way from mexico to georgia enlarged them as everything is bigger in texas? -less sure about the why)