A bracket fungus with a Māori name for every occasion. Cyclocybe parasitica is known as harore, paoke, piritawa, porotawa, tawaka. That is a lot of names for one mushroom. It tells you something about its importance. People do not name things they ignore. The variety of terms reflects deep familiarity. It was not just seen. It was used. The fruiting body appears on the trunks of native hardwood trees. It favours tawa, tītoki, pukatea, or māhoe. It grows in clusters. These are overlapping shelves of brown caps with pale gills underneath. The cap surface is smooth when young. It cracks with age. The stem is off-centre or absent. It has a short stalk, unlike many bracket fungi. The spore print is dark brown. The flesh is white, firm, and slightly fibrous. These details allow for identification. It is edible. People have eaten it for centuries. The taste is mild and slightly nutty. The texture holds up to cooking. It can be fried, boiled, or dried for later use. Traditional preparation involved cooking in a hāngi or boiling in a pot. The mushroom was valued not just for food. It had medicinal properties. It was used to treat wounds, infections, and internal ailments. The utility was broad. Harore is a parasite, as the name suggests. It infects living trees through wounds in the bark. It enters the heartwood and causes rot. The tree may live for years with the infection. Eventually, the structural integrity fails. A tawa with a cluster of harore on its trunk is a tawa that will not stand forever. This is not a tragedy. It is ecology. The fungus recycles what the tree cannot keep. The cycle continues. The English name 'Tree Swordbelt' is a translation of the Māori name 'Piritawa'. This means 'belt of the tawa tree'. The fungus forms bands around the trunk, like a belt. The name is descriptive. It is also a little poetic. The visual match is exact. In the forest, harore is easy to find once you know what to look for. Look for a cluster of brown shelves on a tawa trunk. They are low to the ground. They are often on the side where moisture collects. It fruits from autumn through winter into early spring. The mushrooms persist for weeks. They dry in place. They weather. They drop spores. The timing is predictable. The spore print is dark brown, almost black. It leaves a dramatic mark on any surface below. A tawa trunk with a fresh cluster will have a dark stain running down the bark. That is the fungus marking its territory. It has been doing this for thousands of years. The stain is a signature. Harore can be cultivated, though it is rarely commercialised. The mushrooms are too unpredictable. The substrate is too specific. People who want harore go to the bush. They know the trees. They know the season. They know where to look. The knowledge is passed down. The name 'Cyclocybe' means 'round head'. 'Parasitica' refers to its parasitic lifestyle. The fungus does not care about either name. It just grows. No one told it otherwise.