New psychedelic fungus rewrites origins of magic mushrooms

A newly described species of ‘magic mushroom’ could upend a popular theory of when psychedelic fungi popped up around the world. Researchers had thought that the magic mushrooms that grow in southern Africa were Psilocybe cubensis, the same species that grows in the Americas. However, closer inspection revealed that the African mushrooms are a separate species, now named Psilocybe ochraceocentrata, and last shared a common ancestor with P. cubensis approximately 1.5 million years ago. These findings scupper the hypothesis that P. cubensis was inadvertently introduced to the Americas by 16th-century settlers, but the research offers no clues as to its origins across the Atlantic.