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Psilocybe cubensis
Mexican Dutch King
A golden Mexican cube that earned its name in the old Amsterdam smart shops. Throws a heavy, dependable purple-brown print and clean, textbook spores for the microscope.
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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.
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The short version
Mexican Dutch King is a Psilocybe cubensis said to have started as a Mexican collection and then spent years circulating through Dutch vendors and Amsterdam smart shops, which is how it picked up the "Dutch" half of its name. It is a plain cubensis, not a hybrid, with golden-brown caps and a generous, dark purple-brown spore drop. A handsome, easy-to-study collector's line whose backstory is more vendor lore than documented record.
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. The name is a collector and vendor label, not a taxonomic one.
- It drops a heavy, dependable dark purple-brown spore print, which is exactly what makes it a satisfying line to put under a microscope.
- Under the scope its spores are the textbook cubensis shape: smooth, thick-walled and subellipsoid, with 4-spored basidia, measuring roughly 11.5 to 17 by 8 to 11 microns.
- By most accounts it circulated through Dutch vendors and Amsterdam smart shops in the years before the Netherlands restricted fresh psilocybin mushrooms, which is the most concrete thing anyone can say about its history.
What the community says
- The story goes that it was first collected somewhere in Mexico, then maintained in the Netherlands for so long it earned a name of its own. No collector, date or location is documented, so treat it as lore.
- Why 'King'? Nobody seems to know. It reads like an old smart-shop branding flourish rather than anything with a recorded meaning.
- Vendors often bill it as having 'above average' strength, sometimes quoting tidy tryptamine percentages. Those figures vary wildly by who grew the mushroom, so take strength claims with a pinch of salt. As the hobby says, a cube is a cube.
- It is sometimes described as a distinct Mexican landrace. More likely it is a hobby line that simply traces back to Mexican stock and got polished into a commercial strain abroad.
The story
The cube that went to Amsterdam
Most famous cubes are named after a person or a place. Mexican Dutch King is named after a whole journey, and like a lot of those journeys the details get hazier the closer you look. The shape everyone agrees on is this: the line is said to have begun as a collection from Mexico, then spent years being maintained and sold in the Netherlands, back when Dutch vendors and Amsterdam smart shops were the centre of the spore world. That European chapter is where the "Dutch" half of the name comes from.
What nobody can actually produce is a name, a date, or a spot on a map. There is no collector credited, no published account, no taxonomic paper. By most accounts it surfaced through vendor catalogues rather than fieldwork or a lab, which is the usual story for a strain whose history lives in price lists and forum posts rather than herbarium records. So the framing is that the broad arc is plausible and widely repeated, and the specifics are community lore.
The "King" in the name has no documented origin anyone can point to. It reads like a smart-shop flourish, the kind of regal-sounding label that sells a spore print. The mystery is part of the appeal.
A good cubensis, dressed up
Strip away the branding and you have a clean, well-behaved Psilocybe cubensis. It is not a hybrid and not a landrace in any rigorous sense, whatever the catalogues imply. What it genuinely offers a collector is a handsome golden mushroom and a heavy, reliable spore drop, which is reason enough for a line to outlive its own origin myth. Apparently it has been passed around long enough that "Mexican Dutch King" now means more to the hobby than any record of where it actually came from.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
Mexican Dutch 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
- Mexican Dutch 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, sometimes nippled cap
Medium to large and golden to cinnamon-brown, paler toward the rim, starting bell-shaped or conical and opening to convex then flat. It often keeps an acute central bump (an umbo), and cap shape can vary noticeably even within a single flush.
Tall, wavy stem
White to pale yellow, slim, tall and often a touch wavy, taller than many cubes at the upper end. A leftover partial veil leaves a ring (annulus) near the top that usually ends up dusted purple-brown by falling spores.
Darkening gills
Closely spaced and pale when young, attached to the stem, deepening through dark brown to purplish-black as the spores ripen. This is what feeds the heavy print.
Blue bruising
Handle the flesh and it bruises blue-green where it is touched, the classic Psilocybe reaction as enzymes turn psilocybin to psilocin, which oxidises into blue pigments.
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
- Mexican Dutch 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.
No. It is a plain Psilocybe cubensis. The name is a collector and vendor label for a particular line, not a taxonomic rank, and there is no documented cross with anything else.
Partly verifiable, mostly lore. The widely repeated account is a Mexican collection later maintained and sold through Dutch smart shops, but no collector, date or location is documented. The Dutch circulation is the most concrete part. Treat the rest as community history rather than fact.
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, and 4-spored basidia if you find a clean gill fragment. Locate them at 100x, study at 400x, and get the wall sharp at 1000x under oil.
Yes. It is a generous, dependable depositor with a dark purple-brown print, which is one of the practical reasons collectors like this line.
Cool, dark and dry. A fridge (not freezer) suits syringes and vials; prints keep happily in a sealed bag somewhere cool. Stored well, a print stays viable for study for years.
What customers say
Reviews
So far so good.
Perfect!
⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
Good quality spores. Will definitely be ordering again :)
Very high quality product
Syringe volume is larger that most and came with everything that was needed. I would definitely recommend Cylocybe.
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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.