While it's been known for many years that endosymbiotic fungi are responsible for producing the ergot alkaloids in the Morning Glory plant family, and the recent discovery here is the identification of the host-specific fungal symbiont for the common decorative flower Ipomoea tricolor, this plant-fungus relationship was not known in the days of Albert Hoffman's research.

He is most famous for synthesizing and experiencing the effects of LSD from ergot-derived alkaloids; ergot is a fungal pathogen that grows on grain plants. He then identified psilocybin as the active psychoactive component of magic mushroom samples from Mexico.

When he turned his work to identifying the active component in Morning Glory plants, he presented his work showing that he'd discovered LSA, another ergot alkaloid. Other researchers accused him of having contaminated samples, because he'd found in plants compounds which were known only from the fungi kingdom. Hoffman's work was vindicated, in a sense, when the relationship of endosybiotic fungi (cryptic fungi which spend the majority of their lifecycle inside a plant) was later elucidated.