Menace

Habitat: Bovine, Equine Dung and Enriched Soils

 

Climate: Subtropical

 

Cap: 50+ mm in diameter, hemispheric to convex expanding to broadly convex to nearly plane with age. Dark red maturing to golden brown. Surface viscid with apparent gelatinous layer when very wet, soon smooth from drying. Fine fibrillose veil remnants when young that soon disappear. Flesh white soon bruises bluish green.

 

Stem: 150-200+ mm in length. Typically equal, sometimes slightly enlarged at base, sometimes contorted. Yellowish to buff with a reflective sheen, bruising bluish, hollow. Partial veil membranous leaving a persistent membranous annulus that is well dusted with purplish brown spores even before tearing away from the cap.

 

Gills: Attachment adnate to adnexed. Grayish coloration in young fruit bodies becoming nearly black in maturity.

 

Spores: Dark purplish brown, subellipsoid, 13 by 8 micrometres on 4-spored basidia

Formerly misrepresented as Psilocybe azurescens.

Detail of separable gelatinous pellicle: This feature seems to be unique to the “B+” among cubensis. When young and fully hydrated the cap has a transparent amber colored layer of cells that quickly oxidizes upon removal to a more opaque blue grey colour. The texture is like a thin stretchable layer of gelatin. Note the area where the pellicle has been removed is dull.

 

Variety Origin:

The spores which eventually produced the Menace Strain were discovered in Texas by a user of the Shroomery website named  “Lostfreddy”. 

 

Another Shroomery user named “P. Menace” is the person responsible for the variant named Menace   The first batch looked nothing like the Menace variety we know today. After extensive work, “P. Menace” was able to stabilize a much larger  isolation than he originally worked with. The result is the Menace Strain we know today.

 

The Menace Strain has a unique characteristic which displays itself in later flushes; the caps get very wavy in a pattern not unlike some hubcaps. This is a rare phenotype that doesn’t present itself often, but it does happen on occasion.

 

According to the creator “P. Menace”:

 

“This is the Strain I have been working with for some time to get it stabilized, the specimen was first collected from the Mid-Eastern Texas area, Wild Growing in a pasture, Losfreddy Collected a Spore Print.

Here is the original thread… These Were all Tiny Tiny Mushrooms they were grown in a milk carton.

 

I first received my print in November or December of 2007.

 

So a ton of un-documented work (damn it) later, over a course now of 5+ months work with this strain… I believe I have Finally Done it!! Stabilized the strain!! I’m beginning to wonder how big they can actually get!!

 

In the third flush the caps always begin to get this wavy look to them… Kind of a neat trait if you ask me.”