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Psilocybe cubensis
Stargazer
A classic-name cubensis with a great story and a shaky paper trail. Caps that tip up toward the sky as they age, and a heavy, dark purple-brown print that makes it a pleasure on the slide.
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The short version
Stargazer is an old, widely shared Psilocybe cubensis line whose name reportedly comes from caps that tilt slightly upward, as if gazing at the stars. Genetically it is a plain cubensis, and its romantic Inca/Machu Picchu backstory is undocumented vendor lore. What is real is the mushroom itself: golden caps and a heavy, dark purple-brown spore drop that prints beautifully under the scope.
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 an ordinary Psilocybe cubensis, the same species as every other cube. No hybrid, no separate species.
- It has circulated for years as a named collector line, often sold as both Stargazer and Inca Stargazer, which by most accounts refer to the same thing.
- It drops a heavy, dark purple-brown spore print and deposits readily, which is exactly what makes it a satisfying line to study.
- The name is usually explained by the way the caps tend to tip slightly upward as they mature, as though gazing skyward.
What the community says
- The popular origin story says it was found near the Inca ruins at Machu Picchu in the Peruvian Andes. There is no documentation for this, and it is best treated as marketing lore.
- Vendors often claim it was used in ceremony by indigenous peoples, though the names cited (such as the Nahua) are Mesoamerican rather than Andean, which muddles the tale considerably.
- It is frequently said to appear in Stamets and Chilton's The Mushroom Cultivator. It does not. The cubensis lines named in that book were Amazonian, Ecuadorian, Matias Romero, Misantla and Palenque.
- An old forum tale even had Nostradamus using these mushrooms for scrying, which is impossible given there are no native cubensis in Europe.
- Many experienced collectors regard Stargazer as essentially a name on a label, since a cube is a cube.
The story
A beautiful name with a very thin paper trail
Stargazer is one of those cubensis lines where the romance is louder than the record. The story you will hear, again and again, is that it was found high in the Peruvian Andes near the Inca ruins of Machu Picchu, and that ancient peoples used it in ceremony. It is a lovely image. It is also, as far as anyone can actually show, undocumented. Treat the whole Andean origin as community lore rather than history.
The tale tends to unravel the moment you tug on it. Some versions credit ceremonial use to the Nahua, who were a Mesoamerican people of Mexico, not Andean Peru, so the geography quietly contradicts itself. Another stubborn claim is that Stargazer is written up in Stamets and Chilton's The Mushroom Cultivator. By most accounts it simply isn't. The cubensis lines that book actually names are Amazonian, Ecuadorian, Matias Romero, Misantla and Palenque, and Stargazer is not among them.
The version is short: Stargazer is a plain Psilocybe cubensis with a great name and a backstory nobody can verify. The mushroom is real. The legend is mostly decoration.
So where does the name come from?
The most repeated and most charming explanation is the simplest one. As the fruitbodies mature, their caps reportedly tend to tip slightly upward, so a flush looks like a little crowd of faces turned toward the sky. Hence Stargazer. Whether that tilt is a genuine quirk of this line or just something a grower noticed once and a vendor ran with, nobody can say for certain. What is not in doubt is that under the microscope it behaves like a healthy, generous cubensis, and that is reason enough to enjoy it for what it is.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
Stargazer 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
- Stargazer, 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.
Colour-shifting cap
Convex and roughly an inch or two across, reddish-brown when young, then fading to golden brown and finally a pale, almost buttery yellow with age. Often keeps faint flecks of veil tissue on top.
Upturned habit
The trait the name leans on. Mature caps reportedly tend to tilt slightly upward at the margin rather than sitting flat or domed, the look that earned it the Stargazer name. Reported rather than guaranteed.
Slender ringed stem
Pale yellow to off-white, fairly tall and slim, with a partial veil that leaves a ring around the upper stipe. Bruises blue-green where handled, the classic Psilocybe response as psilocin oxidises.
Darkening gills, heavy print
Gills start grey and crowd toward near-black as the spores ripen, dropping a dense, dark purple-brown print. It is a willing, readily depositing line, which is half of why collectors keep it around.
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
- Stargazer (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 study. A dormant spore contains no psilocybin or psilocin, so the spores themselves are not a controlled substance in the UK. We supply them strictly for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting, never for cultivation.
There is no documentation for it, so treat that as marketing lore rather than fact. The story also tangles itself up, since some versions credit Mesoamerican peoples who were nowhere near the Andes. Genetically it is a plain Psilocybe cubensis with an attractive name.
By most accounts, yes. The two names are used more or less interchangeably for the same line by different sellers. As always with cubensis, names travel and drift, so the label matters less than the species, which is the same throughout.
Smooth, thick-walled, broadly oval (subellipsoid) spores, pale amber individually and dark purple-brown in mass, each with a small germ pore at one end. Locate them at 100x, study at 400x, and bring the wall into sharp focus at 1000x under oil.
Cool, dark and dry. A fridge rather than a freezer suits syringes and vials, while a print keeps happily in a sealed bag somewhere cool. Stored well, a print stays viable for study for years, and being a heavy depositor, Stargazer prints tend to be generous to work from.
What customers say
Reviews
Haven't started growing yet, but I've already sampled the fruits of someone else's labour after a Cylocybe purchase so I have no doubts
Not had a chance to examine them properly yet, as I’m waiting for a replacement bulb for my scope.
Always quality, always quick, thank you.
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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.