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Is it just me or are the mushrooms having a moment?
It seems like you can see mushrooms everywhere these days. From decorating cushions to foraging with friends to microdosing, mushrooms have been trending for a while. Trendy and cool molds are having a real renaissance and I'm here for it.
So what inspired the world to realize just how awesome mushrooms are? I think the popularity of books like Merlin Sheldrake entangled lifeA glimpse into their complex world, combined with the “discovery” of superpowers, catapulted mushrooms into a kind of cultural zeitgeist. A friend of mine here in New Zealand wrote about this: fungi in new zealand.
I mean, I get it. Mushrooms are amazing. From positive health benefits to renewed interest in psychedelics, mushrooms look pretty cool, not to mention how delicious some of them can be. Some can even glow in the dark. Others will kill you. Talk about a mystery. Mushrooms are the real vibe in 2024.
and waswere-kōkako, or neon blue mushroom native to New Zealand. Entoloma hochstetteri.
As fall approaches, it's usually exciting to see large red and white toadstools appearing along our favorite trails. If you're a foodie, head to our secret spot to taste porcini mushrooms. But there's a new celebrity in town. This is Warware-Cocaco.
Well, this guy has been around forever, but has only recently been blowing up online. In fact, New Zealand's green mushrooms adorn our $50 bill. We also hold the distinction of being the only country to have mushrooms on our banknotes. Now that we live in a visual world obsessed with shareable content online, nothing says a quote like a blue mushroom drawn in crayon. It's so Instagrammable.
Also, we're not used to seeing neon blue as a natural color. Weird. It definitely screams “Don’t eat me!” I recently tried werewere-kōkako and met someone who said it was okay; I am skeptical.
Current research suggests that these are not magic mushrooms. Contains absolutely no psilocybin.
New Zealand's blue mushroom gets its Maori name, wawere-kōkako, from the green waddling colors of the endangered North Island kōkako, a native wattle bird. One tradition says that Cocako nuzzled the mushroom and gave the wattle its symbolic blue color.
Just like your mouth turns blue after eating a slushie at 7-Eleven, Coco the Werewolf has to be seen to be believed. I find the best time to spot them is in the fall, in wet areas such as the west coast or Rakiura/Stewart Island. Remember that fall lasts from April to June. I've only seen them in temperate rainforests, protruding from piles of moss or leaves beneath native trees.
One of the reasons I love mushroom hunting is that it forces you to slow down and be present. If you walk really fast in New Zealand you will probably miss it. It's not that big, maybe up to 4 centimeters. Often we saw them huddled together in quite a few pairs in the same area. Finding them becomes much easier if you know what to look for.
It's really fascinating to see pops of neon blue in a forest full of dark greens and browns.
I've seen New Zealand's blue mushrooms here and there over the years I've spent time in the woods, but I never stopped to consider them until I hiked the Rakiura Track with friends at Easter last fall. They were everywhere, along with many other types of mushrooms. It was an unexpected but very fun game where you walk through the bushes and find mushrooms.
The werewolf Cocoa is impressive. Pink Gilt Mushroom (Entomala genus), so far no one has figured out what pigment makes them so blue. And this is actually a big problem because most of the blues we see in foods, drinks, and even cosmetics come from synthetic blue dyes. Most blues that occur in nature quickly oxidize and turn brown.
Scientists here have been trying to isolate the gene that makes wolf coca noses blue, but with little success. They also tried and failed to grow mushrooms in the lab. But some believe that if we figured it out, we could produce the world's first natural blue food dye.
And this is where it gets interesting. Werewere-kōkako is a taonga (precious) species of New Zealand. Māori retain authority over genetics, and commercial work around this requires careful collaboration and partnership with iwi and hapū.
Then it's time to look for New Zealand's blue mushrooms. They are (in most cases) found all over the country. Just start looking down. Don't be afraid to get your knees muddy, kneel on the ground and look under the ferns and through the moss.
The reward of a brief glimpse of the bright blue werewolf Cocoa is worth it.