A conical cap up to 4 cm, indigo to sky blue and fibrous; gills of the same blue, a slender stipe up to 5 cm. The blue comes from azulene pigments.
- Size
- Cap up to 4 cm across, on a stipe up to 5 cm tall and 0.5 cm thick.
- Edibility
- Unknown. Some of its relatives are poisonous, so it is not one to taste.
- Where it grows
- On the floor of broadleaf and podocarp forests in New Zealand, from January to July.
- Color
- Indigo to sky blue, sometimes with a green tint; the gills are blue too, at times with a yellow edge.
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- Family
- Entolomataceae
- Order
- Agaricales
- Ecology
- It lives on the leaf litter and soil of the forest floor.
- Spores
- Pink print, as in every Entoloma; the spores are angular.
- Chemistry
- Its blue comes from azulene pigments, rare among mushrooms.
- Described
- In 1866 by Heinrich Reichardt as Cortinarius hochstetteri, from a collection of the geologist Ferdinand von Hochstetter; moved to Entoloma by Greta Stevenson in 1962.
Commonly associated with
- Māori legend
- Kōkako
- New Zealand
- Folk names
- Werewere-kōkako in Māori; sky-blue mushroom, blue pinkgill.
In folklore
In Māori tradition the kōkako, a forest bird, got the blue wattles under its beak by rubbing them against this mushroom, which is why it is called werewere-kōkako.
Curious fact
It is printed on New Zealand's 50 dollar note, and in 2018 it came first in a public poll for the country's national fungus.
Folklore and traditional associations. They vary between sources and are beliefs, not scientific claims.