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Psilocybe cubensis
Hawaiian
An old-school spore-vendor classic from the High Times era: caramel caps, a thick white stem and a generous, dark print that made it a staple of microscopy shelves long before "strains" were a marketing word.
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Sold for microscopy, taxonomy and collecting only. Not for cultivation.
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The short version
Hawaiian (often labelled PES Hawaiian, PESH, or Maui Platinum) is a plain Psilocybe cubensis named after its old distributor, the Hawaii-based spore company Pacifica Exotica Spora, not after any wild Hawaiian mushroom. By most accounts there is no documented wild cubensis on the islands, so treat the "Hawaiian" name as a vendor label. It throws caramel-gold caps, a thick pale stem, and a heavy dark print collectors have studied for decades.
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 line, not a hybrid and not a separate species, despite the exotic-sounding name.
- The name comes from its original distributor, Pacifica Exotica Spora (PES), a Hawaii-based spore company, which is why it is also written PES Hawaiian or PESH.
- PES was one of the first outfits to advertise spores in High Times back in the 1990s, and the company had quietly vanished by the early 2000s, but its lines stayed in circulation.
- It is a heavy, dependable spore depositor that drops a dark purplish-brown to near-black print, which is exactly why it became a long-standing microscopy and collecting staple.
- It is frequently sold under the later marketing name Maui Platinum, which is the same PES Hawaiian line rather than a distinct mushroom.
What the community says
- The name implies a wild island origin, but by most accounts there are no documented records of wild cubensis growing on the Hawaiian Islands. The label tracks the distributor, not a collection site.
- One widely repeated story is that the founding sample was collected in Florida, made its way to PES in Hawaii, and was then selected over generations for its looks before being named after where the work happened. Treat this as community lore.
- Some hobbyists describe it as a lab selection or cross worked up in-house at PES rather than anything found in the wild, but none of that is documented.
- Because PES disappeared without leaving a clear paper trail, almost everything about the line's earliest days is reconstructed from forum memory rather than records.
The story
Named for a vendor, not a volcano
The "Hawaiian" in this strain's name does a lot of quiet lying, and that is the most interesting thing about it. By most accounts it has nothing to do with a mushroom found growing wild on the islands. It is named after Pacifica Exotica Spora, usually shortened to PES, a Hawaii-based spore company that was one of the first to put magic-mushroom spores in front of a mass audience by advertising in High Times back in the 1990s. The line is often written PES Hawaiian, or just PESH, for exactly that reason.
PES helped seed an entire generation of collections before quietly disappearing somewhere around the early 2000s, leaving very little behind in the way of records. What survived was the spores. Hawaiian and its sibling PES Amazonian outlived the company that named them and are still passed hand to hand today, which makes this one of those lines whose backstory lives almost entirely in old forum memory rather than anywhere you can cite.
Treat the name as a postal address, not a passport. It marks where the spores were sold from, not where any mushroom was found.
The Florida story
The tidiest origin tale, and the one you will hear most often, is that the founding sample was reportedly collected in Florida, travelled to PES in Hawaii, and was then selected over generations for the good-looking fruitbodies before being named for the place the work was done. It is a clean story and it may well be roughly true, but it is community lore rather than documented history, so we will flag it as such. Other accounts call it an in-house selection or even a cross, none of it verified. The version is simpler: it is a very good, very old cubensis whose paperwork went missing with its maker.
The species
Meet Psilocybe cubensis
Hawaiian 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
- Hawaiian, 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.
Caramel-gold cap
Convex when young and reddish cinnamon-brown, opening out broad and flatter with age to a golden brown that pales toward yellow at the rim. A medium-to-large cap by cubensis standards, often left a little ragged at the edge where it tore from the veil.
Thick pale stem
White to off-white, sometimes yellowish low down, fairly stout and on the taller side. A persistent partial veil leaves an annulus (ring) around it that usually ends up dusted purple-brown with falling spores.
Darkening gills
Crowded and grey while young, deepening to near-black as the spores ripen on the basidia. The colour change is the clearest sign the print is ready to drop.
Blue-green bruising
Handle the flesh and it bruises blue-green, the classic Psilocybe tell as enzymes shift psilocybin toward psilocin and oxidation paints in the blue. Common to the whole genus, this line included.
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
- Hawaiian (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 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.
By most accounts, no. The name comes from the distributor, Pacifica Exotica Spora, a Hawaii-based spore company, not from a wild island collection. There are no documented records of cubensis growing wild on the Hawaiian Islands, so treat the name as a vendor label.
Nothing meaningful. PES Hawaiian and PESH are the same line, named for Pacifica Exotica Spora. Maui Platinum is a later marketing name for that same Hawaiian line rather than a separate mushroom.
Smooth, subellipsoid, thick-walled spores, pale amber on their own and dark purplish-brown to near-black in a mass, each with a small flattened germ pore at one end, sitting on four-spored basidia. Find them at 100x, study at 400x, and get the wall sharp at 1000x under oil.
Yes. This line has a long reputation as a heavy, reliable depositor that drops a dense dark print, which is a large part of why it became a microscopy and library staple in the first place.
Cool, dark and dry. A fridge (not a 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
Easy to use syringes with high quality spores.
10 out of 10 always
Always good! Super clean spores.
Brill
Fascinating!
Great syringes. Containing plenty of spores to look at when injected on to a microscope slide. All perfectly clean so that there's no cross contamination to spoil your examination 😝.
Ask the community
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.