Feature image courtesy The New Indian Express

In the cool, damp hush of Telangana’s monsoon forests, colour is everywhere — the glossy green of fresh leaves, the red of wet soil, the yellow flicker of a bird’s wing. But this season, something else has caught the forest’s light. Something unexpected.

A flash of impossible blue lay nestled among the leaf litter in Komaram Bheem Asifabad, catching the eye of forest staff. With its indigo-blue cap and pale gills shimmering in the morning mist, the blue pinkgill (Entoloma hochstetteri) is a mushroom so rare in India that, until recently, it was mostly known from faraway New Zealand — with just a few earlier records here, including one in Odisha in 1989.

And in Kawal Tiger Reserve’s Kaddampeddur range, another wonder appeared — the shuttlecock mushroom (Clathrus delicatus), rising like a tiny feathered crown from the forest floor, its cage-like form a natural sculpture.

These are not common roadside finds. They are small marvels, spotted only because

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