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Comment by ricardo81 | Hacker News Reader

Sounds like sensible advice.

I've been led to believe the psilocybin ones have blue stalks which can distinguish them from others, but wouldn't pass that on as advice, myself.

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It is true that afaik, every pislocybe species bruises blue, the problem is, could it bruise blue, contain psilocybin, but also be poisonous. I think the truth is that it is pretty rare for that to be the case or may even be non existent but I'd definitely want to get verification on that for my specific region before harvesting anything.

Also, as a general point, it is a myth that bruising blue always indicates the presence of psilocybin. For instance, many boletes bruise blue and don't contain any psilocybin.

Here's a picture of an intensely blue staining bolete that does not have psilocybin:

https://i.redd.it/waumic0mjh921.jpg

I have to say, those are incredibly beautiful specimens. Do you know what species that is off hand?

Could be a neoboletus luridiformis with an unusually slim stem. In any case, I would say the color saturation in this picture is cranked up quite a bit.

You are probably right that they played with saturation here but I don't think by that much. I've seen boletes that look pretty close to that in person in the 5-10 seconds after you tear them.

Thats one of the helpful identifiers but not the end of the story. Its a useful puzzle piece

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