Just before the snow fell, I found myself belly down on the forest floor in complete rapture of tiny turquoise mushrooms dotting a mossy log. I pressed my iris as close as humanly possible to a mushroom that looked like it belonged in the rain forest, or glowing on the bottom of the ocean - or on Pluto.
I’ve heard them called turquoise elf caps, and blue elf cups, among other names. They are from the genus Chlorociboria, which is a magical word in itself that is reminiscent of the words chlorine, cyanosis, and boreal swirled together.
Blue swimming pools, deaths blue lips, and forests, are a fitting collage for an encounter with the bright blue stain on dead wood.
The blue stain fungus is by far my favourite, despite this being the first and only encounter I've had with the actually fruiting body of the species. Its color alone makes it compelling, but its elusory nature makes it all the more mysterious and rewarding to find.
I have hunted for one all over the temperate rain forests of Vancouver Island, and yet I finally found one right here on a road allowance beneath Meadow Lake Provincial Park.
You might have gone hiking and seen a bright blue stain on a decomposing log that looks like the tree had sucked on a blue jolly rancher candy, or that someone had spilled a bottle of Blue Curaçao. Such a vivid blue, you question if it is natural, as it creates a peculiar contrast to the spectrum of brown in a northern Canadian fall.
The blue stain left on rotting wood is a product of the mycelium networks of the fungus – a beautiful clue that the turquoise mushrooms had been there.
When you really see it for the first time, without dismissing it as the aftermath of some punk kid dying their hair in the woods, you then start to see it more and more.
Maybe you are kindred with the strange and unusual and spend a little more time searching for the blue mushroom.
It makes our home that much more interesting - a place where blue mushrooms grow on the forest floor before the snow hits.
