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Psilocybe cubensis
Lizard King
A genuine wild Georgia find, foraged off wood chips and a little horse manure and isolated by an anonymous Shroomery hunter. Golden caps, a dense dark print, and clean textbook spores.
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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.
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The short version
Lizard King is a Psilocybe cubensis that, by most accounts, began as a wild collection just outside Atlanta, Georgia, isolated by an anonymous forager who went by "Lizard King" on the old mushroom forums. The name nods to Jim Morrison. It is a plain cubensis with broad golden-bronze caps and a generous, dark purple-brown spore print, which makes it a satisfying line to study and a good collector's piece.
Straight talk
Fact vs. legend
There is a lot of folklore around this strain. Here is which bits are real, side by side.
What we actually know
- Genetically it is a plain Psilocybe cubensis. Not a separate species, not a documented hybrid.
- By most accounts it traces to a wild collection near Atlanta, Georgia, reportedly found on wood chips with a little horse manure rather than pure dung.
- It carries the moniker of an anonymous amateur mycologist who was active in the foraging and identification corners of the old Shroomery forums.
- Mature fruitbodies have golden to bronze caps and pale cream stems, and drop a dense, dark purple-brown spore print, which is why collectors rate it for prints.
- Like every cubensis it bruises blue-green where the flesh is damaged, the classic Psilocybe enzyme reaction.
What the community says
- The name is widely said to be a nod to Jim Morrison, who called himself the Lizard King in The Doors' lyric "I am the Lizard King, I can do anything."
- The story goes that the forager behind it built a reputation on Shroomery for an uncanny knack for finding wild mushrooms across Georgia, though his real identity was never confirmed.
- Vendor pages variously place the original find in the Gulf Coast, the southern US generally, or even the Pacific Northwest. The Georgia account is the most consistently told, and the rest read like guesswork.
- Some accounts describe occasional pale, near-white fruitbodies in the line, which gets loosely called leucistic. Treat that as anecdote rather than a stable defining trait.
The story
A forager's mushroom, named for a rock star
Most famous cubes are passed-around lab isolates with murky paperwork. Lizard King is a little different, because the most-told version of its story starts in the woods. By most accounts an anonymous amateur mycologist who used the handle Lizard King, or just LK, found this one growing wild just outside Atlanta, Georgia, then took it home and isolated it into a stable line. The detail collectors love is the substrate: it was reportedly fruiting on wood chips mixed with a bit of horse manure, which is a slightly unusual spot for a dung-loving cubensis to turn up.
The man behind the name was, by the lore, a fixture of the old mushroom forums, the sort who hung around the foraging and identification boards helping people work out what they had actually photographed in a field. He apparently shared prints, the strain spread, and the vendors of the day picked it up. His real identity was never confirmed, so treat the biography as community memory rather than documented record.
The version is that this is a wild Georgia find named for a rock lyric, carried into the hobby by someone who was very good at spotting mushrooms and never gave his real name.
Where the timeline gets fuzzy
Pin down the dates and things wobble. Some tellings have Lizard King circulating on the forums back in the early 2000s, while one popular account frames the find as happening roughly forty years after Jim Morrison's death, which would push it past 2010. Those two cannot both be tidy, so the safest reading is that the line has been around for a good while and the exact year is genuinely uncertain. As for the name, the link to Jim Morrison and his self-styled Lizard King is the one piece everyone agrees on, even if it is the least scientific.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
Lizard King is a collector’s line of a single, well-travelled species. Psilocybe cubensis was first written up in 1906 by the American mycologist Franklin Sumner Earle, from a specimen found in a cattle field in Cuba, which is where the name comes from. He originally called it Stropharia cubensis; Rolf Singer moved it into the genus Psilocybe in 1948.
The genus name is a tidy bit of Greek: psilos (“bare”) plus kubē (“head”), for the smooth, peelable skin of the cap, so the full name reads roughly as “the bare-headed mushroom from Cuba.”
- Family
- Hymenogastraceae (older books say Strophariaceae)
- Genus
- Psilocybe (Fr.) P. Kumm., 1871
- Species
- Psilocybe cubensis (Earle) Singer, 1948
- Basionym
- Stropharia cubensis Earle, 1906
- This product
- Lizard King, a collector’s cultivar of the species
- Type locality
- Cuba (where it was first named)
How you’d know it
Field marks
These describe the mature mushroom for reference and identification.
Golden-bronze cap
Broad and smooth, light brown to golden in most fruitbodies and deepening towards bronze, often paler at the rim. Conical when young, opening to convex and then flat, sometimes keeping a low central bump.
Pale, fibrous stem
White to cream, fibrous, and on the taller, more slender side for a cube. A leftover partial veil leaves a ring of annulus that usually catches a dusting of fallen spores.
Gills that ripen dark
Closely spaced and pale grey when young, deepening to dark purplish-brown and near-black as the spores mature. This is what feeds the heavy print the line is known for.
Blue bruising
Damage the flesh and it bruises blue-green, an enzyme turning psilocybin into psilocin which then oxidises to blue pigment. Standard Psilocybe behaviour, and present here as in any cubensis.
Where it comes from
A dung-lover with a wanderer’s history
Psilocybe cubensis is coprophilic, a fancy word for dung-loving. In the wild it lives on the droppings of big grazing animals, classically cattle and water buffalo, fruiting from warm, humid pasture. It does not grow on wood and it does not partner with tree roots.
You’ll find it across the warm parts of the world: the Gulf Coast of the United States, Mexico, Central and South America, Southeast Asia and Australia. It was named from Cuba, but where the lineage truly began is an open question. A 2026 study describing its closest wild relative in southern Africa suggests the deep roots are Old-World, the mushroom having apparently travelled with grazing herds long before anyone gave it a Latin name.
The main event
Under the microscope
This is what you actually bought the spores for. Put a print or a drop from a syringe on a slide and here’s what shows up.
- Shape & size. Smooth, thick-walled and subellipsoid, like a slightly squashed rugby ball, roughly 11.5–17 µm long by 8–11 µm wide (the figures Paul Stamets settled on).
- The germ pore. Look for a single pale, flattened dot at one end. That’s the one thin spot in the wall where, in nature, a mushroom would begin, and a real cubensis hallmark.
- Pale alone, dark in a crowd. A single spore looks honey-amber with the light behind it; only in a mass do they read deep purple-brown to black. So a near-black print but pale spores on the slide is normal optics, not a dud.
- What you’ll need. Find the field at 100×, study shape and the germ pore at 400×, and get the wall crisp at 1000× under oil. A touch of methylene blue or KOH lifts the contrast.
- The legal bit, and why it’s true. A dormant spore carries no psilocybin or psilocin at all; that chemistry only appears later in living tissue. That is exactly why the spores are legal to own and study in the UK.
Choose your format
Print, syringe, vial or swab?
Same lab-grade genetics in every option. The honest difference is shelf life versus how soon you’re at the scope.
Spore print
Keeps longest
Spores dropped straight onto sterile foil. Stored cool and dry it outlasts everything else here, so it’s the one to reach for if you’re building a collection to keep for years.
Spore syringe
Ready tonight
Spores suspended in sterile water, ready to go straight onto a slide. The quickest way to be looking down the microscope this evening. Comes in 3 mL and 12 mL.
Vial & swab
Compact
A sealed glass vial is a tidy middle ground; a sterile swab is the most travel-friendly, robust little format for adding a strain to your reference set.
At a glance
The spec sheet
- Species
- Psilocybe cubensis
- Strain
- Lizard King (collector’s cultivar)
- Spore print
- Dark purple-brown to near-black, heavy depositor
- Spore shape
- Subellipsoid, smooth, thick-walled, with a germ pore
- Spore size
- ~11.5–17 × 8–11 µm
- Basidia
- Mostly 4-spored, ~20–30 × 7–10 µm
- Wild habitat
- Coprophilic, on herbivore dung & warm pasture
- Climate
- Subtropical to tropical
- Intended use
- Microscopy, research & collecting only
Dig deeper
Further reading
Independent, non-commercial sources, no shops, just good information.
- Psilocybe cubensis on Wikipedia: the species overview.
- The genus Psilocybe: taxonomy and the family reshuffle.
- Index Fungorum: the formal nomenclature record.
- Proc. Royal Society B (2026): the African wild-relative study.
Common questions
Frequently asked
Yes, for microscopy and research. A dormant spore contains no psilocybin or psilocin, so the spores themselves are not a controlled substance in the UK. We sell them strictly for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting, never for cultivation.
It is widely said to be a nod to Jim Morrison of The Doors, who called himself the Lizard King. The strain reportedly carries the forum handle of the anonymous mycologist who isolated it, and that handle in turn borrowed the rock lyric. It is lore, but it is consistent lore.
No, not as a defining trait. It is a normally pigmented cubensis with golden-bronze caps and a dark print. Some accounts mention the occasional pale fruitbody, but that is anecdote, not a stable feature, so expect a standard dark depositor on the slide.
Smooth, thick-walled, subellipsoid spores, pale amber alone and dark purple-brown in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end. Find them at 100x, study at 400x, and sharpen the wall at 1000x under oil.
If you want something that keeps for years on a shelf, take the print, and this line is a heavy depositor so prints tend to be rich. If you want to be at the microscope tonight, take the syringe. The vial and swab sit in between on convenience.
Ask the community
Questions and answers
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For microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only.Sold for legal research. Not for cultivation. Spores contain no controlled substances. We trust you to be responsible.