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.
