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Psilocybe cubensis
A+ Albino
The ghost-white cube that fooled its own name: a pale, blue-bruising leucistic line that still drops a proper dark purple print, so it studies like a classic A-strain and photographs like nothing else.
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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.
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The short version
Albino A+ (also written AA+) is not actually albino. It is a leucistic form of the old A-strain cubensis, meaning the mushroom itself loses most of its pigment and grows pale cream to white, yet it still deposits a normal dark purple-brown spore print. That ghostly body over a heavy dark drop makes it a striking and genuinely useful specimen on a slide.
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
- It is a plain Psilocybe cubensis, not a hybrid and not a separate species. The pale colour comes from a pigment-reducing (leucistic) trait, not from any cross.
- It is leucistic, not a true albino. The fruitbody loses most of its pigment and grows pale cream to white, but the spores stay normally coloured, so the print comes out a proper dark purple.
- Because the spores keep their pigment, it deposits a heavy, readable print just like a pigmented cube. The pale-body, dark-print contrast is its signature.
- It is a modern hobbyist isolate rather than a wild collection. No single verified creator, date or place of origin is documented, which is fair to say plainly.
- The white flesh against a dark spore deposit gives strong natural contrast on a slide and in a print, which is exactly why collectors single it out for study.
What the community says
- The story most often told is that it is a leucistic offshoot of the A-strain (often written A+), which is itself widely attributed to the old Ralphsters Spores catalogue. Treat that parent lineage as community lore, not proof.
- An early Albino A+ spore print is sometimes credited to a collector remembered only by the handle E-V-da-B (a credit that appears on vendor print listings). It is a tidy origin tag, but it is forum and vendor attribution rather than documented history.
- You will see it called both Albino A+ and AA+, and people argue over whether the parent was the A strain or the A+ strain. The names get used interchangeably and nobody can fully untangle them.
- It gets billed as a rare or exotic albino. In truth leucistic cubes turn up fairly regularly once a pale trait is in a line, and this one is just a well-known, well-circulated example.
The story
An albino that isn't, with a print that proves it
Albino A+ is one of those names that argues with itself the second you look closely. By most accounts it is a leucistic form of the old A-strain cubensis, which means the mushroom loses most of its body pigment and comes up pale cream to bone white, often with cold bluish tones. The giveaway is the spore print. A true albino would struggle to make pigment at all and tend to drop a faint or near-colourless print. This one drops a confident dark purple, which tells you the spores still carry their normal colour and only the flesh went pale. So the popular name is, strictly, wrong, and that little contradiction is the most interesting thing about it on a slide.
The deeper history is thin, and that is worth saying straight. The line is reportedly a pale offshoot of the A-strain (you will also see it written A+), itself usually traced back to the old Ralphsters Spores catalogue, and an early Albino A+ print is sometimes credited to a collector known only as E-V-da-B. All of that is community and vendor attribution rather than documented record. There is no verified creator, no clean date, no place of origin. It is a modern isolate that drifted out of the hobby spore trade, and the version of its story keeps the documented facts and the forum lore in separate boxes.
A true albino can barely make pigment and prints pale. Albino A+ prints dark purple, which is the tell that this is leucistic: the body went white, the spores never got the memo.
Why the contrast matters at the microscope
Because the spores keep their colour, you get the best of both worlds for study. The pale fruitbody is a vivid bit of pigment biology to photograph, and the print behaves like any pigmented cube: heavy, even, easy to read. Apparently the pale flesh still bruises an intense blue-green where it is handled, the same psilocin-oxidation chemistry seen across the wider Psilocybe group, so the ghost-white body and the bruise and the dark print together make it a genuinely satisfying specimen to compare against a standard A-strain or a B+.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
A+ Albino 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
- A+ Albino, 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.
Pale, sometimes nippled cap
Very pale cream to white, palest at the centre, often carrying cold bluish tones rather than the usual caramel. It can keep a sharp little central point (a papilla or nipple) rather than flattening completely.
Ghost-white stem
Coloured much like the cap, pale and fibrous, with a leftover partial-veil ring that usually catches a dusting of dark spores. Bruises intensely blue-green where handled or bumped.
Gills that darken hard
Greyish and pale in young fruitbodies, ripening to near-black at maturity as the spores mature. The contrast against the white flesh is stark, which is part of the strain's whole look.
Dark print, not a pale one
Despite the albino name, the print lands dark purple to purple-brown and deposits readily. That dark drop from a white mushroom is the single clearest field mark and the proof it is leucistic, not truly albino.
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.
- Despite the albino name this is a leucistic line, so the spores are normally pigmented and the print is dark purple, not pale. Under the scope the spores read like any cubensis (subellipsoid, thick smooth-walled, dark in mass) with a clear germ pore; only the fruitbody is depigmented, not the spore.
- 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
- A+ Albino (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, and this is the most useful thing to know about it. It is leucistic. The mushroom loses most of its body pigment and grows pale cream to white, but the spores keep their normal colour, which is why the print comes out dark purple rather than faint or clear. A true albino would tend to drop a pale, sparse print.
Yes. That is its signature. Because only the flesh lost pigment and the spores did not, it deposits a heavy, readable dark purple print just like a normally pigmented cube. The white-body, dark-print contrast is exactly what makes it fun to photograph and study.
Standard cubensis spores: smooth, oval, thick-walled, pale amber on their own and dark in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end. Find them at 100x, study them at 400x, and bring the wall sharp at 1000x under oil. The leucistic trait is a body-pigment quirk and does not change what the spores look like.
No. It is a plain Psilocybe cubensis carrying a pigment-reducing trait, by most accounts a pale offshoot of the A-strain. You will see a vague hybrid rumour now and then, but there is nothing behind it. The white look is colour, not a different mushroom.
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
Looks incredible under the microscope!
Spore hasn’t appeared
Reply from Cylocybe
The tracking shows a picture of it being delivered through your front door. You should have looked that up or emailed us first or spoke to your flatmates before leaving this review. But I guess i am just an idealist!
Great to look at
The only UK spore supplier whose spores I truly trust.
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Perfect
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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.