The short version
A cubensis listing name is a set of labels stacked together. Most of them answer one of four questions: who the parents are, how many generations the line has been worked, which individual it was selected from, and what form the product takes. Here is the key.
- A x B: a cross of two lines.
- F1, F5, F12: the generation count since the cross or collection.
- A number or version after a name (MAK 95, Jack Frost 2.0): one selected individual, kept as its own line.
- iso, MS, LC: isolated, multispore or liquid culture, which tells you what is in the tube.
- revert, mutant, cut, OG: what happened to the line, or whose copy it is.
- A place name (Transkei, Koh Samui): where the original collection was made.
- A brand tag (ACS, CG isolation, Hyphal Mind Cross): who made or worked it.
Crosses written "A x B"
The x means crossed with. Toque x Jack Frost, an isolated syringe from Mushrealm, is Toque crossed with Jack Frost. There is no fixed rule about which parent goes first, so the same pairing can appear in either order from different breeders.
Often the cross sits in brackets after a line name of its own. Dino Spores lists "Bullet Bill F5 (Yeti x Melmak Revert)": Bullet Bill is the name, F5 the generation and the brackets the parents. Abbreviations pack parents in further. APE is Albino Penis Envy, and it turns up inside dozens of names. The Jack Frost post explains mon-mon and di-mon crosses, two more terms you will meet in descriptions.
F-numbers: F0, F1, F5, F12
An F-number is a generation count. F1 is the first generation after a cross, and each step up is one more generation selected from the last. A higher number suggests a line has been worked for longer and so tends to look more uniform, but there is no shared standard, so compare F-numbers within one vendor rather than across them.
Listings run the whole range. MoonDaddy's Dik Dawg F1 is a first-generation cross. Toque turns up at F8 from Sonoran and at F12 from Dino Spores and Mr. Rogers Labz, and in each case the F-number is the generation, not part of the name. Fungus Frequency uses F0 on new crosses such as Moon Surfer F0, which it describes as a clone culture taken from the very first result of the cross, before any further generations.
Isolation and clone codes
A number or version tag after a line name usually marks one individual that was picked out and kept. Mak 95 is listed by Dino Spores as a Melmak isolation originally from a cultivator known as DC Mak, and Fungus Frequency lists a second Melmak isolation by DC Mak as MAK 391. Same parent, different individuals, and the number is what tells them apart. APE 221 works the same way: Dino Spores says it is an isolation originally from Chris Aaron that favours the PF Albino side of APE.
Letters and versions follow the same idea. Fungus Frequency describes SV-10 as an albino phenotype from a cross made by PsyTeamUnited. Telly Monster Myco's Jack Frost 2.0 is a re-selection derived from Jack Frost genetics.
Some numbers are weights. SummerBreeze describes Iceberg 608 as "a clone from a 608g fruit", and What The Fungi labels several of its isos the same way. A number on its own tells you only that the line is a selection, so read the description for what it counts.
iso, MS and LC: what is in the tube
MS means multispore: a suspension of many spores, each a slightly different genetic individual, so the syringe carries the full spread of the line. Sporeworks marks these "(MS)", as on its Koh Samui syringe. Iso means isolated: the spores or culture come from one selected individual, which Sporeworks marks "(ISO)" and Black Forest Cultures writes as "20ml iso". The isolated vs multispore guide covers the difference in detail.
LC means liquid culture: living mycelium in a nutrient solution rather than spores, as in SummerBreeze's "10ml LC Syringe" listings. A research plate is the same living culture on agar. Some lines exist only in these forms, notably the blob mutations in the Enigma post, which drop no spores at all. The spore syringe vs liquid culture guide explains the two formats.
Revert, mutant, cut and OG
Mutant marks a line kept for an unusual form. Hyphal Mind titles its Electrum listing with a breeder's name followed by "Toque F11 Mutant Isolation": a credit, a parent, a generation and a form tag in one line. The vendor says it began as one odd growth during work with Toque spores and was cloned from there.
Revert means a line that has gone back towards the ordinary form after a mutation. Sonoran explains that the R in SV-10R stands for revert, because it is not albino like the original SV-10.
Cut means one person's clone of a line. Black Forest Cultures describes PESA as "Michael0gicals cut of the infamous Pacifica Exotica Spora Amazonian". One trap: Uncut in Penis Envy Uncut has nothing to do with clones. Sporeworks says it refers to a membranous ring on the stem that the original Penis Envy lacks.
OG means original, the version a vendor considers closest to the source. Dino Spores lists OG Transkei alongside plain Transkei, which brings us to place names.
Landrace and locality names
A place name means the line traces back, by the vendor's account, to a collection made there. It says nothing about where the product ships from.
Dino Spores describes Transkei simply as "South African Transkei", and its OG Transkei as collected in southern Africa, with spores first sourced from Alan Rockefeller. Sporeworks says its Koh Samui was originally collected by John Allen on the island of Koh Samui in Thailand. Hyphal Mind describes Cambodian as a historic landrace from the area around the Angkor Wat temple complex, and Mazatepec as a landrace from the highlands of Oaxaca, Mexico. Some listings spell it Mazatapec, so expect spellings to drift.
Oakridge is listed by Sporeworks as Oak Ridge, a collection from horse dung near Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and by Mr. Rogers Labz as "Oakridge 05'", for the year the vendor received it. Put Albino in front of a place and you usually get an albino isolation of a landrace: Fungus Frequency describes Albino Huautla as "an albino isolation from the Huautla land race", Huautla being a town in Oaxaca. The Australian landraces post covers the Australian place names.
Vendor and breeder tags
Tags credit whoever made or worked the line. ACS appears on Mushrealm listings such as ACS Abv440, and the vendor says each one is part of its ACS collection "and has been worked by ACS". CG isolation credits ClemGrows: Mushrealm's PBB listing ends "(CG isolation)", and the description calls it a ClemGrows isolation. Hyphal Mind Cross marks Hyphal Mind's own crosses, such as Angkor Mindbender, which the vendor lists as "Albino JMF x Cambodian".
Older prefixes carry history. SW Penis Envy is Dino Spores' Penis Envy line "sourced from the legends at Sporeworks", the SW pointing to Sporeworks. PES, as in PES Hawaiian, is credited by Dino Spores to Pacific Exotica Spora, which the vendor describes as a now defunct company based in Hawaii. A tag tells you whose work a line is, not how it compares.
Putting it together
Take Dino Spores' "Shiva F7 (JF x Shakti) isolated syringe". Shiva is the line name. F7 is the seventh generation. JF x Shakti is the cross, with JF standing for Jack Frost. Isolated syringe says the spores come from one selected individual. Read that way, almost any listing name turns into a short pedigree. Just remember that every lineage on a label is the vendor's own account; none of them is formally documented, and the description is where the detail lives.
Psilocybe and Panaeolus spores on Culture Cave are sold for microscopy and taxonomy use only, and buyers must know their local law before they order; see the UK legality guide or the US legality guide.