[2] The species was originally described in 1924 by Gordon Herriot Cunningham as Secotium porphyreum, from collections made in Wellington.

[3] In 1954 Rolf Singer transferred it to Thaxterogaster when he erected that genus to contain species with Cortinarius-like spores that had a reduced stipe and gills that were only partially exposed, or the hymenium was loculate (divided into small cavities or compartments).

The texture of the stipe surface is fibrillose (as if made of fibers), and minute grooves can be seen running up and down its length.

The interior of the peridium, the gleba, is pale reddish brown in colour and labyrinthiform (with complicated sinuous lines or winding passages) in form.

Young fruit bodies that are still beneath the earth are white; as they mature and emerge from the ground, the exposure to light causes the color to change to violet.