My postcard: August 2022

Wednesday, August 31, 2022

Unusual mushrooms - Stinkhorns

"Phallaceae is a family of fungi, commonly known as stinkhorns, within the order Phallales. Stinkhorns have a worldwide distribution, but are especially prevalent in tropical regions. They are known for their foul-smelling, sticky spore masses, or gleba, borne on the end of a stalk called the receptaculum." Wikipedia

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Elegant Stinkhorn (Demon Fingers, Devil's Dipstick, Dog Stinkhorn, Headless Stinkhorn)

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Stinky Squid - a member of the Stinkhorn family Phallaceae.

Its shape is distinctly different from most mushrooms. It has three or four separate orange "arms" that are fused at the top.

This fungus gives off a strong, putrid odor that comes from the dark green, slimy material (gleba) that is found on the inner surfaces of the arms.

One of these mushrooms (seen the next day) had no orange arms joined together.

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Netted Stinkhorn - On one of the trails I noticed a particularly looking mushroom which was in the stage of decomposing; it was lying on the ground and many flies were around the top of this strange mushroom.

I took some photos mainly because of the beautiful "lace skirt" surrounding the lower part of the mushroom.

And as I found out this mushroom gets its name from the fishnet-like veil or skirt below the mushroom's head. This white lace skirt, usually grows at night and fully unfolds in about 10 to 15 hours.