Alright, this was a legitimately wild three weeks for fungi news. New species, smoking cessation data that made a lead Johns Hopkins researcher do a double take, and we're apparently only sampling like 30% of the planet's underground fungal networks. It’s cool. Everything is fine.
Let's get into it ⬇️
A Magic Mushroom We've Been Growing for Years Isn't What We Thought It Was 🍄
Here's one that genuinely messed with my head a little.
Those African mushrooms that growers have been cultivating under names like "NSS" or "Transkei" for years? Turns out they're not Psilocybe cubensis at all. Researchers just formally described them as a completely separate species, Psilocybe ochraceocentrata in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, and the evolutionary timeline here is kind of insane.
The two species last shared a common ancestor roughly 1.5 million years ago. That's long before cattle were even domesticated. Which matters, because the dominant theory has always been that P. cubensis spread to the Americas on the backs of colonial era livestock. If these African species branched off that long ago, like before cows were a thing humans controlled then the whole story of how these fungi spread around the planet gets a lot more complicated.
The kicker?
Growers have been cultivating this "new" species for years without anyone realizing it was distinct. The taxonomy just hadn't caught up. Wild that something that popular in cultivation circles was essentially undescribed until now.
Psilocybin Quit Smoking. By a Lot.
A new study out of Johns Hopkins, published in JAMA Network Open, found that a single dose of psilocybin, combined with cognitive behavioral therapy gave participants more than six times greater odds of quitting cigarettes compared to nicotine patches over a six month period.
Six times!
The lead researcher, Matthew Johnson, said he was surprised by "the sheer magnitude of the effect."
Which, honestly, says something. This is a guy who has been studying psilocybin for years. He's not easily surprised. And yet here we are.
The CBT component is worth noting, this wasn't just eat mushrooms, stop smoking. The therapeutic container matters.
But still. Six times! Nicotine patches, which are the gold standard of smoking cessation, aren't even close.
Trip-Free Psilocybin Is Getting Closer to Real
Published March 8 from the American Chemical Society, researchers have created modified versions of psilocin (the active metabolite of psilocybin) that still hit the serotonin pathways linked to depression while producing far fewer hallucinogenic effects.
The goal is broader clinical accessibility. Not everyone wants to trip. Not every clinical setting can support a full psychedelic experience. I’m not a fan of strip mining the psychedelic out of the medicine, but I also get the pragmatism. If these analogs can reduce suffering for people who'd never otherwise access this treatment, it's hard to argue against it.
It's a question worth sitting with though, how much of the therapeutic effect is the experience?
New Antioxidant Compound Found in an Edible Mushroom Nobody Talks About Enough
Researchers at Shinshu University isolated a new phenolic compound, they're calling it inaoside A from Laetiporus cremeiporus, published in Heliyon. First ever isolation of an antioxidant compound from this species.
Laetiporus is the genus that includes chicken of the woods, which anyone who's foraged has probably tripped over at some point. The idea that edible species we've known about for centuries are still yielding genuinely novel bioactive compounds is one of those things that just doesn't get old. We're scratching the surface.
We've Basically Ignored 70% of the Planet's Underground Fungal Networks
This one put me in a mood.
A study flagged in late February found that more than 70% of terrestrial ecoregions have never been sampled for arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi, the underground networks that help plants access nutrients and move carbon through ecosystems. We're talking an estimated 1 billion tons of carbon transferred per year globally, and we've barely looked at the organisms doing it.
Africa, Asia, boreal zones, drylands, huge swaths of the planet are essentially blank on the fungal map. Which means every model we have for how these networks function, how much carbon they're cycling, how they respond to climate stress all of it is built on data from maybe a third of the places that matter.
Think about that next time someone talks confidently about soil carbon sequestration.
Sorry for all the missed weeks! Will be back to getting these out on a weekly basis. Thanks again for the support and I’ll catch ya next week 🍄