CH 01 Origin Updated
Where Penis Envy comes from, and how much of the story is documented
The usual Penis Envy origin story with McKenna, Pollock and Rich Gee, how the main source corrected it in 2021, and which parts no document supports.
- First account in print
- 2009
- Account corrected
- 2021
- Published description
- none
- Status of the story
- unverified
Nobody has documented where Penis Envy comes from. The cultivar has no published description, no reference specimen and no register entry, and the story that circulates about it was revised in 2021 by the journalist who first popularised it. What can be stated is that it is a line of Psilocybe cubensis kept by growers, and that every account of its origin, with dates between 1971 and 1977, rests on interviews and hearsay.
The version most pages repeat
The widely copied account goes back to an article by Hamilton Morris in Vice in February 2009 (Morris, 2009). As later summarised by Leafly, it runs as follows (Levenson, 2022):
- Terence McKenna found P. cubensis growing on cattle dung in the Colombian Amazon in 1971 and brought spore prints back to the United States.
- One print reached Steven Pollock, a doctor with an interest in mushroom cultivation, who is said to have selected the unusual form from it.
- Pollock was shot dead at his home in San Antonio, Texas, in January 1981. The case was never solved (MEL Magazine, 2021).
This is the story that shop pages and forums still tell, often with extra detail that has no source at all.
The 2021 correction
In a podcast on his own Patreon in June 2021, Morris said that he had been misled for the 2009 piece, by the mycologist known as "Mushroom John" (John Allen) and by forum hearsay. According to the Leafly summary, the revised account gives most of the credit for the cultivar to Richard Gutierrez, known as Rich Gee, who is said to have received spores from McKenna through an intermediary. The name itself is said to come from a 1977 conversation in which the mushrooms were compared with a male body part (Levenson, 2022).
We could not listen to the podcast itself, so this site relies on the written summary. The correction does not make the second version documented either. It replaces one oral account with another.
What scientists say about the origin
Researchers regard the story as unproven. In the open peer review of a long-read genome of a Penis Envy culture, two reviewers wrote that the "fabled mutation" appeared in an Amazonian P. cubensis accession as a tall fruiting body with a pale cap and no partial veil, was preserved by cloning, and that this is "anecdotal at best" (McKernan et al., 2021, F1000Research). The authors themselves called the strain name of their sample "anecdotal".
A 2025 review of cubensis strains notes that descriptions of named strains are "predominantly sourced from non-academic, community-based reports", and lists Penis Envy among them for its potency and "distinct morphological characteristics" (Kurzbaum et al., 2025).
Claim by claim
| Claim | Status | Basis |
|---|---|---|
| Penis Envy is a P. cubensis line | supported | ITS sequencing of a culture sold under the name (Sharchaton et al., 2026) |
| It goes back to Amazonian material collected by McKenna | unverified | interviews, 2009 article |
| Steven Pollock selected it | disputed | 2009 article, corrected in 2021 |
| Rich Gee selected or spread it | unverified | 2021 podcast, via a written summary |
| It started as one mutant mushroom kept by cloning | unverified | grower accounts, repeated by peer reviewers as anecdote |
| Every "Penis Envy" sold today descends from one culture | unknown | no genetic comparison between suppliers published |
The first row rests on Sharchaton et al., 2026, who confirmed by DNA barcoding that all 14 named cultures in their study, Penis Envy and Albino Penis Envy included, were P. cubensis. That confirms the species, and says nothing about the history of the line.
Why the history matters for buyers
A cultivar name tells you what a supplier says it is selling. Without a register, two cultures sold as Penis Envy can differ, and newer names such as Penis Envy 6, Melmac or Albino Penis Envy are presented as branches of the same family without published lineage. The morphology page covers what you can check yourself: the build of the mushroom. The lab data show what one measured culture contained, which is the closest thing to a fact this cultivar has.
If you buy a grow bag in the Netherlands, the shop's strain card is the description you get. Dutch-Smart describes its APE grow bag as a pale Penis Envy variety with "compact, dense fruits with thick stems".
