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Microscopy spores Psilocybe Cubensis - Guapiles

Psilocybe cubensis

Guapiles

A young wild line said to come from the cattle fields around Guápiles on Costa Rica's Caribbean side. A genuine landrace collection rather than a lab strain, with the dark, dependable print of any dependable cube.

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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.

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The short version

Guapiles is a recent wild-collected Psilocybe cubensis, reportedly gathered around the town of Guápiles in Limón Province, Costa Rica in 2021. It is a true geographic line, not a hybrid or a lab isolation, so it carries the genetics of a tropical dung-lover collected from cow pastures rather than a hobbyist setup. Its documented history is short and mostly traceable to vendor listings, so we keep the backstory accurate.

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 wild-collected line, reportedly gathered around the town of Guápiles in Costa Rica rather than isolated on a hobbyist's setup.
Genetically it is a plain Psilocybe cubensis, the same species as Golden Teacher or B+. It is not a hybrid and not a separate species.
Guápiles is a real place, the seat of the Pococí canton in Limón Province on Costa Rica's humid Caribbean lowland side, an hour or so northeast of San José by road (route 32).
As a true geographic collection from cow pasture, it is a textbook coprophilic (dung-loving) cubensis taken from the kind of warm, wet, cattle-grazed ground the species favours.
Its documented record is thin and recent. Most of what is written about it traces to vendor listings rather than peer-reviewed taxonomy or a long forum history.

What the community says

The story goes that it was collected by someone known only as Drew on the 10th of March 2021, in the fields around Guápiles. Treat the exact name and date as community lore, not verified record.
Local guides reportedly remembered as Ice-Sunshine and Fab are said to have helped find it, and a share of sales is said to go back to them. We cannot independently confirm any of this.
One guide, Fab, is quoted saying the fields of Guápiles are spiritually important to locals and that spirit guides will take your hand and lead you to the mushrooms. Lovely image, firmly in the realm of folklore.
Because it is a recent name, you will sometimes see conflicting years attached to it (a 2021 wild collection versus a later isolation from spore). The line is young enough that its paper trail has not fully settled.

The story

A cube straight off the Caribbean lowlands

Most of the famous cubes are lab strains, lines that someone selected, named and stabilised indoors over many generations. Guapiles is the other kind. By the accounts that exist it is a wild collection, gathered from the cattle fields around the town of Guápiles in Costa Rica and then put into circulation more or less as nature handed it over. That makes it less a brand and more a postcode, a snapshot of Psilocybe cubensis doing what it has always done in the warm, wet tropics.

Guápiles itself is real and easy to place. It is the main town and seat of the Pococí canton in Limón Province, sitting on the humid Caribbean side of the country, the gateway road northeast from San José down toward the coast. The habitat described is exactly what you would expect for a dung-lover: rough cattle pasture, big boulders scattered through the fields, hillsides that drop away into sudden little cliffs. The story goes that it was picked up by someone known only as Drew in March 2021, apparently with help from local guides. We pass that along as lore, because that is what it is.

It is less a brand than a postcode: a snapshot of a tropical dung-lover, collected from cow pasture and shared roughly as it was found.

Young name, short paper trail

Here is the part. Guapiles is a recent line with a thin documented history. Almost everything written about it traces back to a handful of vendor listings rather than to herbarium records, a published description, or years of forum chatter. You will even see different years pinned to it depending on who is telling the story. None of that makes it less interesting as a collector's line, a genuine geographic cubensis is a fine thing to have on a slide, but it does mean the romance around it should be read as romance. Under the microscope it is, reassuringly, just a very ordinary and very good Psilocybe cubensis.

The species

Meet Psilocybe cubensis

Guapiles 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: Guapiles, 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-brown cap

Like the wider Costa Rican lineage, the cap runs golden-brown to light tan, convex with a small central bump when young and flattening with age. Often a little paler toward the rim. Caribbean-lowland cubes are not known for any unusual colour, this is a standard warm-toned cube.

White, cattle-field stipe

A pale white to cream stem (stipe), fibrous and sometimes stout in the way wild pasture cubes tend to be. A leftover partial veil leaves a ring (annulus) that usually ends up dusted purple-brown once the spores drop.

Darkening gills

Crowded gills that start pale grey and deepen toward near-black as the spores ripen in mass on the basidia. The deeper the gills, the riper the print.

Blue bruising

Damage the flesh and it bruises blue-green, the classic Psilocybe tell as enzymes turn psilocybin to psilocin and that oxidises to blue pigment. Reported on Costa Rican wild cubes, base of the stem especially.

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: Guapiles (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

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 same species as Golden Teacher and B+. What is distinctive is its origin: it is a wild geographic line said to have been collected around Guápiles in Costa Rica, rather than a lab-selected strain. The collector's value is in that provenance, not in any taxonomic difference.

The standard cubensis print: dark purple-brown to nearly black, and as a wild line with no albino or leucistic trait there is no reason to expect anything paler. Individual spores look pale amber alone and dark only in mass. It deposits like any healthy cube.

Smooth, thick-walled, subellipsoid spores, pale amber individually and dark in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end. Find the field at 100x, study shape at 400x, and bring the wall and pore sharp at 1000x under oil immersion. Methylene blue or KOH helps with contrast.

Treat it as community lore. The collection story, the 2021 date, the local guides and the spiritual claims all come from vendor listings, not from any verified record. It is a charming tale and may well be broadly true, but we cannot confirm the details, so we will not state them as fact.

Cool, dark and dry. A fridge (not a 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.

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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.