Fungus Hunting in Otago, New Zealand

1940

Dunedin Naturalists’ Field Club Archives

Dunedin: Coulls Somerville Wilkie Ltd

Helen Kirkland Dalrymple (c. 1883-1943) grew up in the Catlins, and graduated BA from the University of Otago in 1906. She became a teacher of Latin, English and Botany at Otago Girls’ High School where she took the girls on field trips and nurtured their enthusiasm for botany. Dalrymple was president of the Dunedin Naturalists' Field Club several times and when it was put forward that the club should ‘go into recess’, it was her determination that kept it going. Dalrymple was an expert on fungi. In her Fungus Hunting, which she also illustrated, she describes her travels to beech forests, sand hills and manuka groves in Otago, where she finds ‘creamy-coloured Clavarias, the scarlet-capped Secotium, [and] the red convoluted stalkless Paurocotylis.’