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Psilocybe cubensis
APE Revert
The Albino Penis Envy line that grew a print back. APE-R keeps the bulky PE look but drops a proper dark spore print, which makes it one of the more rewarding albino-lineage cubes to put under glass.
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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.
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The short version
APE Revert (APE-R) is an isolation out of Albino Penis Envy that "reverted" toward an older phenotype, recovering functional, pigmented spores. Where true APE is a famously poor, sparse, near-clear depositor, APE-R lays down a readable dark brown to purple print with only a few pale spores mixed in. It is a more recent line and its history is largely community lore, but that spore behaviour is its genuine, documented hook.
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 an isolation out of the Albino Penis Envy (APE) line, which itself is reported to be a Penis Envy crossed with Albino A+, so it sits firmly inside the Penis Envy family of Psilocybe cubensis.
- It is still a plain Psilocybe cubensis. The Penis Envy lineage is selected cubensis, not a separate species or a cross with anything outside the species.
- Its defining trait is its spores: where true APE barely sporulates and drops near-clear spores, APE-R deposits a readable dark brown to purple print with only a small fraction of pale spores in the mass.
- The name 'Revert' refers to the line shifting back toward an older, more typical cubensis phenotype, most obviously in spore colour and in caps that open more than a classic Penis Envy.
- It shows less of APE's full albinism, so fruitbodies tend to come up creamy tan to caramel rather than the chalk-white of true APE.
What the community says
- By most accounts the isolation is credited to a hobbyist named Jake Oncid around 2019, but this is community attribution passed between vendors rather than anything formally documented. Treat it as lore.
- The parent APE is reportedly a cross of Penis Envy and Albino A+, a story that is widely repeated in the hobby but rarely shown with any hard records.
- The Penis Envy backstory at the root of the family is the famous one: spores said to trace to a Terence McKenna collection in the Amazon, later worked on by Dr Steven Pollock before his 1981 murder. A 2021 Hamilton Morris interview with Richard Gee complicated the chain of custody. It is a great tale and a contested one.
- Some growers framed the 'reverted' look as a disappointment, a regression away from the prized PE blob, which is apparently where the slightly grumpy name comes from.
The story
The albino that grew its print back
Most of the famous albino-lineage cubes share one frustration for anyone at a microscope: they barely drop a print. True Albino Penis Envy is the poster child for it, a thick, pale, stubborn thing that produces almost no spores, and what little it sheds comes out near colourless. APE Revert is the line that, by most accounts, walked that back.
The story goes that APE-R is an isolation pulled out of APE around 2019, usually credited to a hobbyist named Jake Oncid. We would flag that the attribution is community lore rather than documented fact, the way almost all of these modern vendor names are. What is consistent across the descriptions is the behaviour: this line "reverted" toward an older, more typical cubensis phenotype. The phallic Penis Envy cap relaxes and opens a bit more, the chalk-white fades toward creamy tan and caramel, and crucially the spores come back, pigmented and plentiful enough to read.
A "revert" just means a selected line drifting back toward its ancestral look. In APE-R the giveaway is the spore print: dark and readable where its albino parent gives you almost nothing.
Why collectors actually like it
For a study sample that is the whole appeal. You get a fruitbody that still carries plenty of the bulky Penis Envy family character, but it actually deposits. The print is dark brown to purple with only a scattering of pale spores left over from the albino side, which makes it far less of a chore to work with than true APE. It is reportedly a touch prone to throwing odd or mutant forms, which is fairly typical of the heavily selected PE lineage. Take the precise origin with a pinch of salt and enjoy it for what it verifiably is: an albino-line cube that gives you something proper to look at.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
APE Revert 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
- APE Revert, 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.
Creamy tan to caramel cap
Paler and less open than a standard cube but more pigmented than true APE, often coming up ivory-tan to caramel. The pronounced phallic Penis Envy cap shape is softened here, so caps tend to open further toward a normal convex form.
Thick PE-family stem
White to off-white and still carrying much of the bulky, dense Penis Envy build, though typically a little more elongated than the classic PE blob. A partial veil may leave a ragged ring or remnant on the stipe.
Darkening gills
Pale when young, deepening toward purple-black as the spores ripen, which is the visible sign of the pigment this line recovered. A maturing print picks up that dark dusting where true APE would stay near-blank.
Blue bruising
Damaged or handled flesh bruises blue-green, the usual Psilocybe reaction as enzymes convert psilocybin and the product oxidises into blue pigment. Common right across the Penis Envy family.
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.
- Expect a mixed deposit. Because APE-R sits one step away from a true albino, a print can carry a few pale, lightly pigmented spores alongside the normal dark ones. Under the scope the bulk reads as ordinary cubensis spores, pale amber alone and dark in mass, with the odd faint one. That mixed colouring is itself the interesting thing to look at, since it is the visible signature of a line caught part-way between albino and pigmented.
- 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
- APE Revert (collector’s cultivar)
- Spore print
- Dark brown to purple, with a minority of pale or near-clear spores in the mass
- 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 carries 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.
Mainly the spores. True APE is famously a poor, sparse depositor that drops near-clear, unpigmented spores, which makes it awkward to study. APE-R has 'reverted' toward an older phenotype and lays down a readable dark brown to purple print with only a few pale spores mixed in. It also shows less full albinism and a cap that opens a bit more.
By most accounts yes, which is the point of this line. Where its albino parent gives you almost nothing, APE-R deposits a dark, pigmented print, with just a minority of pale spores left over from the albino side. That makes it one of the friendlier albino-lineage cubes to put under a scope.
Mostly ordinary cubensis spores: smooth, thick-walled and roughly oval, pale amber individually and dark in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end. You may also catch the odd faint, lightly pigmented spore, the leftover albino signature. Locate at 100x, study at 400x, sharpen the wall at 1000x under oil.
The hobby usually credits an isolation by Jake Oncid around 2019, out of the Albino Penis Envy line. We would treat that as community lore rather than documented history, since it is passed between vendors with little hard record, which is normal for modern strain names.
Cool, dark and dry. A fridge (not freezer) suits syringes and vials; a print keeps happily in a sealed bag somewhere cool. Stored well, a print stays viable for study for years.
What customers say
Reviews
All gravy baby!
Really interesting under the microscope
The spoor fully populated the grain tub
Clean
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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.