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Psilocybe cubensis
Mazatapec
An old Mexican-named line carrying the romance of the Sierra Mazateca, with caramel caps and a heavy, dependable dark purple-brown print that drops in mass.
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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.
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The short version
Mazatapec is a classic, much-loved Psilocybe cubensis whose name points to the Mazatec region of Oaxaca, Mexico, home of the mushroom traditions Wasson and Maria Sabina made famous. It is sold as a Mexican landrace, though the specific collection record is thin. Expect caramel-brown caps, a sturdy ringed stem, and a generous, heavy dark purple-brown spore print that makes it a satisfying study line.
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 hybrid and not a separate species.
- It is a long-circulating, widely shared line that has been in the hobby for decades and is considered one of the more established Mexican-named cubensis.
- It drops a heavy, dependable spore print, dark purplish-brown to nearly black, and is known as an abundant, reliable depositor.
- The name clearly references the Mazatec people and the Sierra Mazateca of Oaxaca, Mexico, the same region tied to the famous 1950s ethnomycology of Wasson and Maria Sabina.
- Despite the storied name, it is by all accounts an ordinary cubensis with no special distinguishing traits beyond its history and its generous spore drop. As the saying goes, a cube is a cube.
What the community says
- The story goes that Mazatapec is a true Mexican landrace, collected wild from the grazed hillsides of the Sierra Mazateca, but no named collector or firm collection date survives, so treat that provenance as community lore.
- It is often presented as one of the first cubensis lines brought from Mexico to the West, riding the coattails of the Wasson and Maria Sabina story, though Wasson himself is not documented as naming this particular strain.
- The spelling itself is contested: many in the community argue it should read Mazatepec (Nahuatl mazatl, deer, plus tepetl, hill, meaning roughly deer hill) after the Mazatec homeland, and that Mazatapec is a long-perpetuated misspelling.
- Vendors sometimes frame it as the strain the Mazatec shamans used in their veladas, but the link between this exact cultivated line and any ceremonial mushroom is unverified.
The story
The cube that borrowed a sacred name
Mazatapec is one of those cubensis lines whose romance lives almost entirely in its name. The word points straight at the Mazatec people and the Sierra Mazateca, the cloud-forest highlands of Oaxaca in southern Mexico, and at the most famous chapter in the whole story of these mushrooms: the 1950s, when banker and amateur mycologist R. Gordon Wasson sat in on the night-long velada ceremonies of the curandera Maria Sabina and brought the existence of Mexican psilocybin mushrooms to a Western audience. Mazatapec wears that history like a borrowed coat.
Whether the coat fits is another matter. By most accounts this is a Mexican landrace, a line said to have been collected from the cattle-grazed hillsides around the Mazatec villages and later stabilised for cultivation. The trouble is that, unlike a documented herbarium collection, the strain arrives with no named collector and no firm date. Wasson is not on record naming this particular line. So the framing is that Mazatapec is an old, well-travelled hobby line carrying a real and important place-name, and that the rest is community lore rather than verified provenance.
Even the spelling is up for debate. A good chunk of the community insists it ought to be Mazatepec, after the Mazatec homeland, and that the everyday spelling is a misprint that simply stuck.
Deer hill, more or less
That Mazatepec reading has a tidy etymology behind it: from the Nahuatl mazatl, deer, and tepetl, hill, giving something like "deer hill." It is also a real town in Morelos and echoes the name of the Mazatec themselves. None of that pins down where a single spore print was scraped, but it does anchor the name in genuine Mexican geography rather than pure marketing. For a collector, Mazatapec earns its keep the practical way: broad caramel caps and a heavy, generous spore drop that makes it a pleasure to put under glass.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
Mazatapec 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
- Mazatapec, 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.
Caramel to dark-brown cap
Roughly 2 to 8 cm across, caramel to a deeper reddish-brown, conical or bell-shaped when young and opening to convex or flat with age. It often keeps a small raised central bump, an umbo, and the colour tends to fade paler toward the rim and as it dries.
Sturdy ringed stem
White to creamy, medium thickness, fibrous and fairly tall, hollowing with age. A leftover partial veil leaves a persistent ring, the annulus, near the top, which usually ends up dusted purple-brown by falling spores.
Gills that darken to near-black
Crowded and pale grey when young, ripening through purple-grey to almost black as the spores mature. Attachment is adnate to adnexed against the stem. This is a strain known for depositing spores in mass and in quantity.
Blue bruising
Cut or handle the flesh and it bruises blue-green over time, the familiar Psilocybe reaction as enzymes convert psilocybin to psilocin, which then oxidises into blue pigments. Textbook cubensis behaviour.
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
- Mazatapec (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 sold as one, and the name genuinely points to the Mazatec region of Oaxaca. But there is no named collector and no firm collection date on record, so the landrace story is best treated as community lore. What is solid is that it is a long-circulating, well-established cubensis line.
Both turn up. Mazatapec is the spelling that stuck in the hobby, while many argue the correct form is Mazatepec, after the Mazatec homeland (Nahuatl mazatl, deer, plus tepetl, hill). We list it as Mazatapec because that is what collectors search for, but the two refer to the same line.
Smooth, thick-walled, subellipsoid spores, pale amber individually and dark purple-brown in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end. They run roughly 11 to 17 by 8 to 12 micrometres. Find them at 100x, study at 400x, and bring the wall sharp at 1000x under oil.
It is known as a heavy, reliable depositor, dropping spores in mass and in quantity, which is exactly what you want for study and storage. Its dependable dark print is a big part of why this line has stayed popular with collectors for so long.
Cool, dark and dry. A fridge (not freezer) is ideal for syringes and vials; prints keep happily in a sealed bag somewhere cool. Kept well, a print stays viable for study for years.
What customers say
Reviews
Best quality microscopy research spores out there.
Purchase was perfect with no colonization probs. Will be using again without a doubt.....😊
Very well packaged and trustable.
Great service thanks
The red piece was hard to remove but it was fine in the end.
Reply from Cylocybe
Hi Freddie, if it helps next time - the red cap can be screwed off with the clear plastic break-off part :)
All good
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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.