UF scientists report a mushroom that makes both psilocybin and a deadly toxin

What the UF team found

The paper, posted on the bioRxiv preprint server and indexed on PubMed, reports that "the 'dark magic mushroom' Galerina indica produces both psilocybin and amatoxins."¹ Mass spectrometry found both kinds of compound in mushroom tissue, and genomic analysis identified the matching biosynthetic genes.¹

The authors write that the two compound classes "have never been shown to co-occur within a single species" before. That's their claim, and peer review hasn't tested it yet.¹ Their analyses also suggest that the species acquired the ability to make psilocybin through horizontal gene transfer, the passing of genes between organisms outside normal inheritance, after it already made amatoxins. That change "may have coincided with reduced amatoxin potency," they write.¹

Reduced potency isn't the same as safe. In the full text, the authors note that amatoxins "are responsible for most fatal mushroom poisonings."²

Who did the research?

First author Andrew R. Kunik and senior author Matthew E. Smith are in UF's Department of Plant Pathology. Other UF authors are in the Department of Chemistry and the College of Medicine's Department of Pathology, Immunology and Laboratory Medicine in Gainesville, with co-authors at the University of California, Berkeley, the University of Utah and Ohio State University.¹ PubMed lists a National Institute on Drug Abuse grant, F31 DA060559, and the authors declare no competing interests.¹

Why it matters in Miami

Amatoxins "can lead to liver failure and death when ingested," and poisonous mushrooms "often resemble and are difficult to distinguish visually from nonpoisonous, edible mushrooms," researchers wrote in CDC's Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report in May 2026.³ Their report counted 39 suspected amatoxin poisonings in Northern California from Nov. 18, 2025 to March 17, 2026, among people who had eaten wild mushrooms. Three needed liver transplants and four died.³

If the UF finding holds up, a mushroom that causes psychedelic effects can't be assumed free of amatoxins. The same CDC report describes a "pattern of delayed onset of gastrointestinal symptoms and hepatotoxicity," so feeling fine at first proves nothing.³

If someone may have eaten a poisonous mushroom, call Poison Control at 1-800-222-1222 without waiting for symptoms. In Miami-Dade the line reaches the Florida Poison Information Center at UM/Jackson Medical Center, which answers "24 hours a day, seven days a week."⁶ If the person "collapses, has a seizure, has trouble breathing or can't be awakened," Poison Control's advice is to call 911 now.⁷ Our help page lists the local lines.

Possessing psilocybin mushrooms, wild or not, is also a crime here. Psilocybin and psilocyn are Schedule I in Florida, and possessing any amount is a third-degree felony.⁴⁵ The Florida Supreme Court's 1978 decision in Fiske v. State didn't legalize wild mushrooms; our guide to the Fiske case explains what it held.⁸