The species is found in Mexico, where it grows singly or in small groups in clayey soils in subtropical coffee plantations, and from Colombia and Brazil in South America.

The mushroom contains the psychedelic compounds psilocybin and psilocin, and all parts will stain blue or bluish black when handled or injured.

[2] It was one of several species described and illustrated in the popular American weekly magazine Life ("Seeking the Magic Mushroom"), in which R. Gordon Wasson recounted the psychedelic visions that he experienced during the divinatory rituals of the Mixtec people, thereby introducing psilocybin mushrooms to Western popular culture;[3] it was however, mislabeled as Psilocybe zaptecorum.

[4] Similarly, Psilocybe specialist Gastón Guzmán suggests that P. zapotecorum, as described by Rolf Singer in 1958,[5] is misidentified as it agrees well with the type of P. hoogshagenii.

[1] The species is named in honor of American anthropologist Searle Hoogshagen,[6] who helped Heim and Wasson in their search for entheogenic mushrooms in Mexico.

Psilocybe semperviva, described by Heim and Roger Cailleux in 1958,[8] was later determined by Guzmán to be synonymous with P. hoogshagenii var.

A thin rudimentary cortina-like partial veil covers the gills of immature fruit bodies, but it is fragile and disappears soon after the cap expands.

The basidia (spore-bearing cells) are usually four-spored, hyaline (translucent), roughly cylindrical or with a central constriction, and measure 12–22 by 5.5–9 μm.

Pleurocystidia (cystidia on the gill face) are relatively abundant; they are ventricose (swollen), club-shaped or irregularly shaped, measuring 16–36 by 8–12 μm.

[1] Fruit bodies of Psilocybe hoogshagenii grow solitarily or in small groups in humus or in muddy clay soils in subtropical coffee plantations.

[1] Psilocybe hoogshagenii mushrooms are used for entheogenic, or spiritual, purposes by some Chinantec-speaking curanderos of the Ixtlán District in Oacaxa.

[12] The mushrooms are primarily used to diagnose and prognose illness, and, to a lesser extent, to divine the location of objects or animals that have been lost or stolen.