Researcher
Breyten van der Merwe
Mycologist, Stellenbosch University · contemporary
The young Stellenbosch researcher who led the 2024 description of two new southern African Psilocybe species — the work that finally put a documented African mushroom tradition into the scientific record.
A discovery from the lab bench
Breyten van der Merwe — a mycologist and postgraduate researcher in Karin Jacobs’s lab at Stellenbosch University — led the DNA work behind one of the most important recent findings in the field: the formal 2024 description of two new southern African species, Psilocybe maluti and P. ingeli.1 For most of the twentieth century, scholars assumed traditional serotonergic-mushroom use was essentially an American story. Van der Merwe’s paper is a large part of why that assumption no longer holds.
Science done with, not about
The work stands out for how it was done. Van der Merwe’s team brought together university sequencing, citizen mycologists, and — crucially — the Mosotho traditional healer Mamosebetsi Sethathi as a co-author, documenting the use of P. maluti on the community’s own terms.2 It is a model for how the next chapter of the mushroom’s story might be written: young researchers and knowledge-holders, named together on the same page.
Footnotes
The record
Sources & editorial record
Sources & further reading
Breyten van der Merwe et al. (2024). A description of two novel Psilocybe species from southern Africa and some notes on African traditional hallucinogenic mushroom use. Mycologia 116(5).
Formally describes two native southern African species — Psilocybe maluti and Psilocybe ingeli — and reports Basotho traditional use of P. maluti, co-authored with the traditional healer Mamosebetsi Sethathi. The first strong published African case.
University of Cape Town / Stellenbosch University (press summary) (2024). Two new species of Psilocybe mushrooms discovered in southern Africa. Phys.org / ScienceDaily.
Accessible reporting on the 2024 discovery, including how citizen mycologists Talan Moult and Cullen Taylor Clark and healer Mamosebetsi Sethathi contributed to the work.
Editorial record
Corrections history
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