Where the Mushrooms Grow
A Note on Liberty Caps in Late 1970s Britain
One of the most surprising historical facts in Andy Letcher’s cultural history of the magic mushroom, Shroom (2006/07), is that the first recorded intentional eating of a Psilocybe semilanceata in Britain was as recent as 1970. The article, by Lynn Darnton, appeared in underground magazine Oz.
The diminutive conical-hatted ‘Liberty Cap’ can be found throughout much of the island, so it’s perhaps a little surprising that there is such a recent date on its evidential record. One presumes there must have been earlier mycologically-curious British psychonauts in the 1950s and 60s, spurred on by news of magic mushrooms emanating from across the pond, yet accounts, even vague references, are scarcer than peppermint tea-induced machine elves.
There are occasional unintentional records, dating to the late eighteenth century, and there’s certainly a scattering of Amanita muscaria experiments. Yet, as Letcher n…