Cambodian.

What's known

Here's what's meant to be true and not.

What we actually know

• It is a plain wild-type Psilocybe cubensis, a geographic collection strain rather than a hybrid or a separate species.
• Most accounts say it traces to wild mushrooms found growing in cattle dung near the Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap, Cambodia.
• It is widely credited to the ethnomycologist John W. Allen, a genuinely documented researcher and the namesake of Psilocybe allenii.
• It drops a heavy, well-defined dark purple-brown spore print, the standard for the species, which is why collectors find it a satisfying strain to study.
• Like every cubensis it bruises blue-green where the flesh is handled, the classic Psilocybe reaction.

What the community says

• The strain is named for its supposed collection site, the temples of Angkor Wat, though a strain name only records collection history and not a separate biology.
• Allen is said to have gathered it on the same Cambodian trip that he collected the dung-loving Copelandia (Panaeolus), then made prints that spread the strain to vendors. Treat the exact retelling as community lore.
• Sources cannot agree on a date, with the collection placed anywhere from the early 1990s to around the year 2000, so pin the year down loosely at best.
• It is often talked up as one of the fastest, most vigorous strains going. That is a hobbyist's cultivation claim and has nothing to do with the dormant spores in a vial.

Where it came from

Most cubensis strain names are pure marketing, but Cambodian comes with an origin story that is unusually easy to take seriously. Most accounts say the strain traces to wild Psilocybe cubensis found growing in cattle dung near the Angkor Wat temple complex in Siem Reap, in the hot, humid lowlands of Cambodia. That is exactly the kind of place this mushroom thrives, a warm climate full of grazing animals, which is the whole reason a temperate hobby ended up chasing tropical dung-lovers around the world.

The collector usually named is John W. Allen, the ethnomycologist better known as "Mushroom John". Unlike the anonymous figures behind a lot of strain stories, Allen is a real, documented researcher, the namesake of Psilocybe allenii and the first to formally collect several Southeast Asian psilocybes. He is said to have made dense spore prints from his finds and passed them out, and from there the Cambodian strain spread to vendors and into the wider collecting scene.

The gap in the story is the date. Sources put the collection anywhere from the early 1990s to around 2000, so treat the exact year as community lore rather than a fact you could cite.

What to expect at the scope

For all the temple romance, there is nothing exotic about the mushroom itself. Cambodian is a plain wild-type cubensis, not a hybrid, not an albino, and not a separate species. The Angkor backstory is geography, not biology. What you get is a sturdy, good-looking cube with warm caps and a generous, clean spore drop, which is really all a collector wants from a study strain. Allen reportedly gathered a blue-staining Copelandia on the same trip, a completely different mushroom, so do not let the shared origin tale blur the two together.