Is it legal where you live?

Psilocybin law is unusually messy, because the mushroom's life cycle crosses several legal categories. The same country can allow one stage and prohibit another, which is why you'll see growing supplies sold openly in places where the mushrooms themselves are controlled.

Why one plantable thing has four legal statuses

Most drug laws control the psychoactive compound, and the different stages of a grow contain different amounts of it:

• Spores contain no psilocybin at all, so in a number of places they can be sold and owned legally
• Mycelium and kits sit in a grey zone: no meaningful psilocybin yet, but some laws treat cultivation itself as the offence
• Fresh and dried mushrooms contain the controlled compound, and are prohibited in most of the world
• Sclerotia ("truffles") are the odd one out: a few jurisdictions regulate them separately from mushrooms, which is why they're openly sold in some smartshops

The patterns you'll encounter

Roughly speaking, jurisdictions fall into a few buckets: full prohibition of every stage including spores; spores legal but germination illegal; supplies tolerated while fruiting bodies are controlled; decriminalised personal use; and a small but growing number of regulated or therapeutic-access frameworks.

Which bucket you're in decides everything about what arrives in the post legally, so it's the first thing to establish. Not the last.

What to actually check

• Whether spores are legal to possess, and whether intent to cultivate changes that
• Whether cultivation is an offence separate from possession
• How fresh vs dried mushrooms are treated, since drying is sometimes read as preparation
• What your seller ships to your country, which is often the quickest signal of all

This page describes patterns, not the law of any specific place, and laws change. Check a current, local source before ordering anything, and when in doubt, ask a lawyer rather than a forum.