The short answer
Panaeolus cyanescens, shortened in the hobby to "Pan Cyan", is not a kind of Psilocybe. It belongs to a different genus, drops a jet-black spore print rather than a purple-brown one, and has lemon-shaped spores that look nothing like the ellipsoid spores of Psilocybe cubensis once you have seen both on a slide. It is a small, pale, blue-bruising mushroom of tropical and subtropical pasture, where it is found on the dung of cattle and horses. The named lines vendors list, such as TTBVI, Byron Bay or Eungai, are almost all wild collections named after the place they were found, plus a handful of crosses between them.
A different genus from Psilocybe
Panaeolus and Psilocybe are often sold side by side, but they are not close relatives. Psilocybe sits in the family Hymenogastraceae, while Panaeolus has traditionally been placed in the Bolbitiaceae, and molecular work has moved it again since. The blue bruising they share also turns up in several unrelated genera, Gymnopilus and Pluteus among them, so it is no evidence of kinship.
Older literature files Pan Cyan under the genus Copelandia, as Copelandia cyanescens, and some vendors still print that name. Copelandia is now usually treated as a group within Panaeolus. The feature that defined it is microscopic: thick-walled cystidia (metuloids) on the gill faces, which most other Panaeolus species lack.
What you see under the microscope
The spores are the clearest tell. Seen face on, Panaeolus cyanescens spores are lemon-shaped (limoniform), broad in the middle and drawn out towards each end, with a distinct germ pore at the tip; seen side on they are narrower and more elliptical. They are smooth, thick-walled and so dark they look black in a water mount. Cubensis spores have a germ pore too, but they are purple-brown and ellipsoid, without the lemon outline.
The gills give a second clue. Panaeolus spores ripen unevenly, so the gill faces look mottled grey and black rather than evenly dark, a character that runs through the whole genus.
The print
A Pan Cyan print is jet black. A Psilocybe print is dark purple-brown to purplish black, which can look similar on foil in poor light; on white paper, or under the microscope, the difference is plain. If a "Pan Cyan" print comes out brown, question the label. Two of the lines below are named or described by their vendor for a reddish print, which is worth a look precisely because it is so unusual for the genus.
Tropical dung habitat, and why collections carry place names
Panaeolus cyanescens is pantropical. It is recorded from the Caribbean, Florida, Hawaii, Central and South America, Africa, South and Southeast Asia and the subtropical east coast of Australia, nearly always on dung in grazed pasture. It is not a woodland or wood-chip species. Because it appears wherever there are warm pastures and grazing animals, almost every line in circulation began as a wild find on a particular farm or island, and the name records where. A collection name is a locality, not a breed; the post on how to read a strain name covers the other naming conventions.
Blue Meanie: one name, two different mushrooms
The biggest source of confusion around Pan Cyan is a name. In Australia, "blue meanies" is a long-standing common name for wild Panaeolus cyanescens, and some listings still describe Pan Cyans as "aka Blue meanies". Separately, Blue Meanie is the name of a long-established Psilocybe cubensis strain. Sonoran Spores calls its Blue Meanies "one of the OG Cubensis varieties" and says no one is certain where they came from, "although many agree that they were first found in Australia", which helps explain why the two names get tangled.
They are different species in different genera. The cubensis Blue Meanie drops a purple-brown print with ellipsoid spores; a Pan Cyan drops a black print with lemon-shaped spores. When a listing says Blue Meanie, check the species line. Culture Cave files the cubensis strain on the Blue Meanie page and every Panaeolus cyanescens collection on the Pan Cyan page, so the two never share a page.
The named collections on Culture Cave
The details below come from the vendors' own listings. Where a vendor gives no backstory, none is offered here.
Caribbean, Hawaiian and Florida collections
TTBVI is the best known. TecheGenetics expands the name as Tamarind Tree British Virgin Islands, and Sporeworks says the line was originally collected in the British Virgin Islands by a local mushroom enthusiast. Sonoran Spores lists TTBVI as wild-collected landrace prints sent by the collector, and Fungus Frequency lists it as a liquid culture and research plate. BVI is the same island lineage under the shorter name: Hyphal Mind describes its BVI prints as a TTBVI lineage "identifiable by deep blue bruising where handled and jet-black spore prints", and Sporeworks lists a BVI multispore syringe.
Sporeworks also lists Jamaican and Hawaiian isolate syringes; it says the Jamaican line was originally collected by its own team, and gives the Hawaiian one a habitat of bovine dung in a tropical climate.
Florida supplies several more. Blue Springs is a Florida collection, listed by Fungus Frequency and by TecheGenetics as a print and an isolated syringe. N. Florida Angus Farm is a Sonoran Spores landrace print from wild specimens the owner found on an Angus cattle farm in northern Florida; the vendor notes that wild prints carry more contaminants but much more genetic diversity than domesticated lines. Bunnel, FL is a Kaiju Cultures isolated syringe carrying a Florida place name. MIB (Kaiju and TecheGenetics) and Monte Grande (TecheGenetics) are listed without a backstory.
Australian collections
Most Australian lines were foraged on the subtropical east coast by collectors the vendors credit as Sporexchange and Onlyspores. Hyphal Mind lists Byron Bay prints (Fungus Frequency also has it as a liquid culture), Tweed Valley, and Pandora, a wild find from the forager's 2025 season. From Eungai on the New South Wales mid north coast come two colour forms, Eungai Black Spore and Eungai Red Spore, sister collections that Hyphal Mind keeps apart by print colour. Fungus Frequency lists plain Eungai, and What The Fungi has an isolation it calls Eungai B.I.G for its very large caps.
Aussie Night Cap is a Hyphal Mind print the vendor describes as forming very tight clusters, and Sporeworks lists a multispore syringe simply as Australian. The Australian landraces post sets these beside the wild cubensis and native species from the same region.
Crosses: Komodo, Norns and Nashi Pear
A few lines are deliberate pairings rather than wild finds. Hyphal Mind lists Komodo x BVI as a cross by the breeder Sarek, identifies Komodo as Panaeolus cambodginiensis, a related blue-bruising species described from Cambodia, and says the cross is "characterised by a rusty red spore print". Fungus Frequency lists the same pairing, and Kaiju Cultures lists Komodo x TTBVI as an isolated syringe.
Hyphal Mind's own Norns is a three-way line built from Eungai and Komodo x BVI and named after the Norns of Norse mythology. Norns x Keystone Maui crosses that again with a Keystone x Maui line from Sarek, and Eungai x Nashi Pear is a Sporexchange cross of two Australian Pan Cyans.
For a taxonomy student the Komodo crosses are the interesting ones: the vendor's claim is that two species have been combined, and the reported red print is a visible character that departs from the black typical of the genus. That is the vendor's account rather than a published result, and a print and a slide are the way to see it for yourself.
Other Panaeolus, and where to start
Pan Cyan is not the only Panaeolus on Culture Cave. Sporeworks lists Panaeolus bisporus, a species of manure and enriched soil named for its two-spored basidia, and Dinospores lists Panaeolus olivaceus from a wild Oregon collection. Both show the genus characters and make useful comparison material beside a Pan Cyan.
If you are new to the genus, start with a print rather than a syringe: a print shows you the black colour directly and gives dry spores for a clean mount. The guide to spore prints and swabs explains the formats. The exotic Psilocybe post covers the other side of the name clash, Psilocybe cyanescens, which shares the species name (it means "turning blue") but is an unrelated wood-loving mushroom.
Psilocybe and Panaeolus spores and cultures on Culture Cave are sold for microscopy and taxonomy use only, and buyers must know their local law before ordering; see the guides on whether mushroom spores are legal in the UK and in the USA.