Without it, the flax stands perfect. Green. Unblemished. The weavers check each leaf by hand. They run fingers along the surface, feeling for raised bumps. When they find them, they set the plant aside. The fungus creates black streaks. Long. Narrow. The streaks rupture. Black powder spills out. The powder is spores. Millions of them. They stick to fingers. They blow onto neighbouring plants. The infected leaves grow twisted. The flower stalks abort. The plant survives. It does not thrive. The weaver walks to the next harakeke. She chooses another leaf. The Harakeke Smut infects both species of New Zealand flax. Phormium tenax. Phormium cookianum. The fungus enters through wounds. Insect bites. Wind damage. The tips of leaves where they split. Once inside, mycelium grows between the plant cells. It does not kill the tissue directly. It redirects nutrients. The infected areas swell. The plant deposits more sugars. The fungus consumes them. Then the spores form beneath the epidermis. Black masses push outward. The skin breaks. The wind carries the spores. The cycle repeats. Habitat is any place where harakeke grows. Swamps. Roadside ditches. Coastal cliffs. Māori cultivation sites abandoned generations ago. Urban gardens. The fungus does not discriminate. It follows its host. It does not survive on dead plant material. It needs living flax. If the host is removed, the smut dies within months. There is no soil reservoir. No dormant phase. Only infected plants. Only living tissue. Threats are the same as threats to its host. Draining of wetlands removes harakeke habitat. Conversion of flaxland to pasture removes the fungus with it. Road widening. Housing development. The smut does not disperse far. Spores travel metres, not kilometres. A harakeke stand isolated by farmland or suburbia cannot be reinfected if the fungus dies out. Local extinctions occur. Weavers notice. They remember which stands are clean and which are not. The knowledge passes down. The fungus has no such memory. Range across New Zealand reflects the distribution of Phormium. North Island: widespread from Northland to Wellington, including the Coromandel, Waikato, Bay of Plenty, Taranaki, Manawatu, and Wairarapa. South Island: common in Nelson, Marlborough Sounds, West Coast, Canterbury, Otago, and Southland. Also present on Stewart Island, the Chatham Islands, and the Kermadec Islands. The smut arrived with the flax. The flax arrived naturally. The smut is native. Neither plant nor fungus has an origin story outside New Zealand.