It is named for the Zapotec Indians, who are native to the Sierra Madre mountains of Oaxaca Mexico, as well as the area they inhabited. According to Richard E. Schultes the Zapotec name translates as "Crown of thorns mushroom". Other sources give the Zapotec name as badao zoo translated as "hongo borracho", "drunken mushroom"

• 1956: Holotype collected August 4, 1956 in Santiago Yaitepec by Roger Heim and R. Gordon Wasson
• 1957: Roger Heim and R. Gordon Wasson describe Magic Mushrooms with illustrations in LIFE Magazine May 13, 1957.
• 1958-9: Roger Heim published the first scientific description of this fungus. Albert Hofmann also finds Psilocybin.
• 1963: Roger Heim describes this mushroom in the work "Les Champignons Toxiques et Hallucinogènes."
• 1976: Jonathan Ott and Gaston Guzman publish again about the fungus, but describe it as Psilocybe candidipes.