I just won the Cultivar Cup! Merry Christmas!! [Bonus: TTBVI Origin Story]

Dec 24, 2022

Thank you everyone for making this a wonderful year for psychedelic research and progress. Things seem to be moving at an unprecedented and exciting pace with new legislation, formal and informal research, clinical trials, senate debates, whole states decriminalizing, wow, such an amazing time to be alive. Here's to an even better 2023!

Once again MagicMyco/Doma did an amazing job producing 305 pages of reports around this Winter Solstice Cultivar Cup. Besides the contest itself he documented his continued extensive research around mushroom alkaloid extraction methods which is critically important to the testing world, and he developed a brand new DMT testing method which has already proven useful for quantifying DMT purity levels and helping us understand what we can do to produce even higher purity extracts. I expect to dive into this subject matter in more detail in the future so stay tuned!

Now lets look deeper into the Cup results... I count 26 entries, which is great, but I would really like to see this grow to 100+ entries for the next one. The more testing we conduct, the more we will all learn and benefit.


I was very excited that two different people sent in Psilocybe Azurescens (Azzies) for this Cup! SO MANY (uninformed) people still believe this is the most potent species in the world because Paul Stamets said it was in a book that is now 26 years old, haha. He was wrong then but I can't blame him, it was based on our limited knowledge at the time, however people who still believe this today have no real excuse because we've known for many years now that pan cyans are the champs, but it was good to go head to head here all being tested by a single lab using the same procedures with fresh samples of each one. As you can see, one of the Azzies did come in 3rd place, but both of my TTBVI (pan cyans) soundly beat it rounding out 1st and 2nd place. TTBVI stands for "Tamarind Tree British Virgin Islands" and I have included the "origin story" later in this post for your enjoyment.

You will note that I sent in two different TTBVI samples (A and B) I was attempting to assess the relative difference between harvesting before spore production (A) and after spore production (B). As you can see this did not make a huge difference in the grand total psilocybin equivalent value but the earlier harvest was superior, and the more important observation is that the psilocin more than doubled in the late harvest fruit bodies, this is not a good thing, as it means the sample will lose potency faster in storage (psilocybin is considered more shelf stable and as it degrades it turns into psilocin). So the bottom line is that this test confirms that you want to harvest mushrooms before they start producing spores for optimal potency and long term storage stability.

Here is the detailed look at the winning sample:



The best way to grow this is the latest Pan Cyan Easy TEK but  a mini greenhouse/martha is also an option. TTBVI remains the most potent known mushroom cultivar in the world so far, based on testing from at least 5 different independent labs, ranking 1st place for potency in the Cultivar Cup, the Denver Psychedelic Cup, the Psilocybin Cup, the Entheo Cup, and the Island Cup! It has been tested by MagicMyco, Altitude Consulting, Tryptomics and TrypLabs to name a few. Its other very special feature is the speed at which a person can go from spores to harvest, its remarkably fast, as little as 23 days. Very few other mushrooms can come close to this. It makes the cultivar especially well suited for stealth grows.

I'd like to mention collaborations with  Tryptomics and  Altitude Consulting  have been great, over time the different labs have helped refine one another's procedures and over time have been getting more consistent results. If any other labs out there want to work with us on future research, please contact me or MagicMyco. From my perspective, it is not acceptable if one lab cannot reproduce the results of another lab. Everyone is still kind of scrambling to perfect the art and science of mushroom testing, it is an industry that took time to mature mostly due to the strict and restrictive scheduling of psilocybin around the world. Even as recently as November 2022 some researchers have published mushroom testing results that used what I consider obsolete extraction methods (see: Extensive Collection of Psychotropic Mushrooms with Determination of Their Tryptamine Alkaloids ) this should NOT BE HAPPENING in modern times! So the more collaboration and publishing of methods, the better the science will be moving forward, let's keep making progress!

At any rate, I am happy to let supporters know that I now have an abundance of legal, TTBVI caterpillars to share with anyone that wants one. They are free to all members, one person called me "Jonny Applespore" which I liked ;) I never got into this to make money, I do it to help people and to promote solid research, science, and education. I've sent out thousands of caterpillars all over the world.

I also want to mention again that the person who originally collected this world record cultivar still sells wild prints from the British Virgin Islands and he would be more than happy to sell you some interesting new cultivars from the island including gormet/edible prints as well. I have no idea how similar various wild prints from around the island will turn out to be, it would make for an interesting research project but I can tell you that some vendors selling "BVI" have weak genetics compared to mine. If you'd like to contact this man in the British Virgin Islands (again this is NOT Gordo) use: [email protected] or Reddit (https://www.reddit.com/user/TamarindTreeBVI/ ).

[UPDATED TO MAKE THIS MORE CLEAR: I, Gordo, am NOT this person in the British Virgin Islands, some people have contacted him thinking they were contacting me. If you want to contact me just join my discord or become a supporter, both links are here: https://gordotek.org/

Without further ado, HERE IS THE STORY behind "TTBVI" and how this cultivar came to the world, in his own words:

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"As a content creator you may be interested to know that there is a beginning to this story... It all started in my local college library in the British Virgin Islands (BVI) where I, a mycophobe, saw a copy of Mushrooms Demystified by David Aurora 


"Being a book lover, I read it in full and transformed spontaneously into an amateur mycologist. Either on the same shelf, or one shelf over there was a copy of The Psychedelic Experience, being really into lucid dreaming at the the time I thought that was an interesting book as well.

"After that I was dreaming about mushrooms...



"Wanting to find such out of reach & exotic northern gourmets such as candy caps, and the red wine mushroom. Eventually I found reishi, and one year from the start of this adventure & much searching I found my first wild cubensis, it was a tiny single mushroom lol. After a bit more learning I stopped throwing out the pans due to doubt, and started taking prints of the few I'd find as well. Usually I like to find mushrooms several times before feeling OK about my identification. Back then anything "active" I found was very scarce in quantity.

"It was just at that time that I got a bag of dung from one of the fields which i had permission to take cow dung from:



"I brought it home and left it in the bag under my tamarind tree:


"The next time I opened it, there were these two large totally white & blue mushrooms growing between the dung and the bag. I took them in to ID as I was only confident at identifying reishi by sight at the time. With the remainder of the dung I mixed it with some local coconut husks placed it in an amateurishly dug hole under the tamarind tree which I covered with natural debris.

"Shortly after to my utter surprise I found there were these huge white Panaeolus mushrooms that had grown out of the same spot:

“From then I've referred to them personally as the Tamarind Tree pan cyans (TTBVI). As far as identification goes the only thing confirmed is that they are of the Panaeolus cyanescens grouping. Macroscopically they looked different than the tiny pans in most pictures and their almond like smell was to me fantastic. But of course I also realize that the environment has a lot to do with how large a mushroom will grow. Taxonomic certainty aside, & working with what I had available, I found that I was able to get really good prints from this species. And it seemed I could make people happy just by the visual appearance of larger than average prints.

"Some time after that and with a bit more learning, I started to trade & sell prints as visually appealing souvenirs (all mushrooms are legal to possess in the BVI). I am actually a local from the BVI. I've lived here all my life, I have an associates degree and license for farming:


"Currently I am working towards starting an edible gourmet mushroom farm. More like currently looking for a temporary job to get funding haha, but I don't need that much to get going so this new interest in the prints really means a lot to me financially. Seriously, every sale is a lot to me at the moment. The reddit spore trading scene has really taken a hit. It's good to have a history & help people avoid scammers. I currently feel more secure about my email [email protected] for sales including gourmet species.

"As far as ancedotes go... I personally am not particularly fond of experiences with the wild local cubensis on island. While the local Pans experience is usually very very beautiful, if it's good it is a lifelong memory of beauty, which can hardly be accurately conveyed by words. I've heard it described as usurping that feeling of nothing will ever be that good again, from someone that thought they had previously reached the pinnacle of human pleasure."

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So there you have it, hope you enjoyed the story behind the cultivar! TamarindTreeBVI likes to remain anonymous, I don't even know his name, but I feel just a little bit like Hamilton Morris after tracking him down and getting his firsthand story. This was a lot of fun and I feel enriched for having done it. It would be even better if I could go visit him, maybe some day? I wish him all the best and hope he is able to achieve his dreams of starting his own gourmet mushroom farm on the island. I also want to acknowledge that it was legendary mycologist and collector "VL" from France that acquired these spores first before generously sending them (along with many others) to me - love this community! VL had been keeping the genetic line alive for years as part of what he does to preserve specimens of interest. VL also likes to keep a low profile, and did not want me to post his contact info.

Regards, Merry Christmas & HAPPY NEW YEAR EVERYONE!

-Gordo

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