Pluteus salicinus

Knackered Cup · Willow Shield

PalearcticNearctic

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A pale-grey shield-cap mushroom that grows on rotting willow, beech, and other deciduous wood across Europe and North America. Contains psilocybin and psilocin at modest concentrations — one of the very few psilocybin-producing species outside the Psilocybe and Panaeolus genera.

ECOLOGY & HABITAT

Saprotrophic on decaying hardwood logs in deciduous and mixed forest of the temperate Northern Hemisphere.

Distribution

EuropeWestern RussiaEastern North America

REFERENCES

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Stamets 1996

Kin & neighbors

Semi-aquatic perennial herb with intensely aromatic rhizomes containing α- and β-asarone. Distinguished from sweet flag's many lookalikes by the characteristic spicy-bitter scent. Among the most globally distributed sacred plants of antiquity, named in Egyptian, Greek, Vedic, and Chinese pharmacopoeias.

Close relative of the fly agaric whose tan-brown cap conceals a substantially higher concentration of ibotenic acid and muscimol — making it both more potent and more dangerous than A. muscaria.

MuscimolIbotenic Acid

European perennial whose glossy black berries and dull-green leaves contain a lethal cocktail of tropane alkaloids — long associated with witchcraft, flying ointments, and Atropos, the Greek Fate who cuts the thread of life.

AtropineHyoscyamineScopolamine

Widespread Eurasian toad whose parotoid secretion contains bufotenine, bufotalin, and other bufadienolides at lower concentration than Rhinella marina. Of more historical and cultural than pharmacological interest — repeatedly named in early-modern European witch-trial confessions and herbals as an ingredient in flying ointments and brews.

Bufotenine

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