A Hidden World:
Discovering the Beauty
of New Zealand Fungi

 

A Hidden World:
Discovering the Beauty
of New Zealand Fungi
Paula Vigus
Potton and Burton (2025)
Hardback, 168 pages
978-1-9885507-9-4 $49.95

 I was once one of a group of soldiers running through an old pine plantation, when I saw to my amazement a huge red toadstool with white spots. It looked just like the illustrations of goblin’s homes in children’s storybooks. Accustomed only to gathering mushrooms from sheep paddocks on misty mornings, I had no idea such spotted fungal fantasies could be real. I would have paused to check for little doors and windows but our compass exercise had a cruel time limit.  

 Paging through A Hidden World decades later, I had a sudden memory flash - on page 40 to be precise. There was my goblin house identified as Amanita muscaria or fly agaric and noted as ‘a favourite subject for artists and storytellers.’ Its ‘polka dots and bright red caps’ were beautifully photographed by Paula Vigus against a background of pine needles.

 Her prose is as perfect as her photographs. She recalls A. muscaria fondly as the first mushrooms she ever photographed while holidaying with her grandchildren at Hanmer Springs in 2015. ‘Some were as big as dinner plates.’  Then she adds that these fungi are notorious for their toxins. ‘If you touch one it will not harm you, but I strongly advise that you don’t lick your fingers.’

 The whole book is like that. Each handsome fungi portrait is accompanied by its scientific and common name, then a brisk description of its special features, habitat and distribution. These are followed by intriguing and enchanting revelations about each. Take, for example, Entoloma hochstetteri or werewere kōkako. It’s a stunningly eye-catching blue mushroom which graces New Zealand’s $50 note. The Māori know why it was chosen to share the note with the kōkako, and so does Paula Vigus who writes about ‘the belief that when a kōkako rubbed its wattles on the mushrooms it turned blue.’

 The full-page colour photos of everything from toothed fungi to stinkhorns, cat’s tongue to jelly babies, wax gills to the golden tufty top are simply stunning. The fungi look like everything from undersea coral to alien monsters. The colours too are unbelievably beautiful. This book will inspire any young reader to an appreciation of what an amazing world of fungi surrounds us. A hidden world, indeed. Nor do would-be mushroomers and funglers have to travel far to find interesting specimens. A southern false morel was found in the Franz Josef Glacier car-park, while a shaggy-coated dotty inkcap was located ‘on a park walkway in Christchurch…all bundled up and waiting for winter.’

 

With her superb photography skills, inquisitive mind, clarity of expression and impish wit, Paula Vigus has created a book that will inspire an enthusiasm for fungi. Young readers will find her summaries delightfully readable. The pictures are all attention-grabbers and her essays on photographing these tiny subjects reflect her years of learning techniques in the years since her interest in fungi began during the Covid lockdown.

 She even has a message for those who kick over toadstools, ‘…if you kick a toadstool or mushroom over, it grows back just the same and you have probably spread the spores. Hooray says the mushroom!’

 

Trevor Agnew
June 2026 [Review 3841]

 This review was first published in the July 2026 issue of Magpies Magazine.