True blue

Thank you for your interest in the all-blue agaric article on page 34 of the March 2011 issue of Veld & Flora. It seems like it has opened up a whole can of worms, or should I say rather a whole can of mushrooms! Thanks are extended to Cathy Sharp for sharing the record from Zimbabwe and to Dr Greer Hawley for the record from a farm south-west of Cathcart in the Eastern Cape. I am certain that more records will come to the fore.
I have been fascinated by how such a small blue mushroom has caught the attention of the New Zealanders. Peter Buchanan from Landcare Research in the “land of the long white cloud” relates a Maori story behind the image of a bird and two blue mushrooms appearing on the reverse side of the NZ$50 bank note - the native bird "kokako" got the blue colour of its "wattle" (on its cheek) by rubbing itself against the mushroom! To Peter’s knowledge, this is the only bank note in the world displaying an image of a mushroom.Peter also mentioned that the blue mushroom is only found growing in forest in New Zealand, in contrast to our local records mostly from grassland dominated systems. However, I am happy to report that I have recently collected the all-blue agaric from deeply shaded swamp forest near Sodwana Bay in Maputaland, northern KwaZulu-Natal. A single individual was growing in moist leaf litter; I guess one of the trademarks of a true (blue) saprophyte.
Dr Clinton Carbutt, Ezemvelo KZN Wildlife

The image of a Kokako comes from Wikipedia.