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Story: Poisonous plants and fungi

Magic mushroom

Magic mushroom

Eight species of magic mushroom are known in New Zealand. They can be found growing on animal dung and rotting wood. Some have hallucinogenic properties and have been collected by people seeking states of euphoria. In New Zealand it is illegal to cultivate or prepare any magic mushroom.

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The Hidden Forest

by Clive Shirley

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How to cite this page

Maggy Wassilieff, Poisonous plants and fungi – Poisonous fungi, Te Ara – the Encyclopedia of New Zealand, https://teara.govt.nz/en/photograph/9793/magic-mushroom (accessed 5 June 2026).

Story by Maggy Wassilieff, published 1 March 2009.

Comments

Rachel
31 July 2022
This description reflects ideas which are outdated, colonialist, and dismissive of loads of evidence demonstrated by the scientific community at large. I understand that the current laws have not been updated, but sometime within our lifetimes they will be and in that case this page will need to be updated.
John Lewis
30 September 2013
Psilocybin (the hallucinatory chemical that gives its name to the like-genus of magic mushrooms) is not poisonous and is thus incorrectly categorized here. Psilocybin is approximately half as toxic as caffeine and rated as less than three times as toxic as aspirin.(See Wikipedia).