The stinkhorn Phallus impudicus, a species native to Europe and North America, looking happy to see us. Photo credit: Jean-Pol GRANDMONT/Creative Commons Attribution Sharealike 3.0 license. Click for link.
All right, gentlemen. Show of hands. How many of you would be proud to have a two-inch, foul-smelling, penis-shaped fungus named after you? Really?
Well, Robert Drewes, curator of herpetology at the California Academy of Sciences, was certainly pleased as punch. He was the leader of a biodiversity survey to the African islands of Sâo Tomé and Príncipe. When one of his mycologist buddies discovered a new species of stinkhorn, whose genus name, Phallus, pretty much says it all, he decided to name it after Drewes, who already has a snake and frog named after him.
Click here to see a picture of Drewes’s Phallus. It’s quite beautiful, actually. Boy, never thought I’d say that in public.
Stinkhorns are basidiomycetes, one of the four major groups of fungi. This group includes mushrooms and boletes (mushrooms with pores underneath instead of gills) and a whole bunch of other interesting fungi we won’t go into right now.
Stinkhorns start out as little eggs, sometimes called “witch’s eggs”, that are considered edible delicacies by many cultures. They don’t stink when they’re little, I’ve been told.
Would you eat this? Me neither. Cross section of a stinkhorn egg of Phallus hadriani, photographed in California. Photo: Nathan Wilson. Published under a Creative Commons Attribution ShareAlike 3.0 license. Click image for link.
But within a few days, the eggs pop open and the “shameless phallus”, as Linneaus called it in Latin, arises from the forest floor. The head is covered in a sticky, carrion or dung-smelling, olive-colored spore mass called the gleba, in which passing flies delight in wallowing. They then spread the spores via the friendly skies.
{ 8 comments… read them below or add one }
lol, that’s gross, but what an awesome name for a fungus
I’ve eaten them (thanks, Rob) and, well, yuck.
Psst…I think you misspelled “basidiomycetes.” :)
Indeed I did! I fixed it now — thanks for the help! : )
I had another one in my yard last week. What a kick!
More background on this story: several years ago, the esteemed herpetologist was honored to have the infamous turd snake (Slitherodorus drewsii) named in his honor. Several months later Dr. Drewes grew suspicious of an elaborate prank when colleagues considered him for the naming of the perky dung frog (Poopus-hoppingus drewsii.) However, all hell broke loose when Drewes recently returned from a coffee break to learn that yet another foul and suggestive organism was to be forever linked with his legacy.
Heck, what guy wouldn’t be honored to have one of these named after him. Pretty funny fungus indeed.
There has been a big flush of these in my neighbors yard. At least of them popped out in all their grandeur. No one seems to photograph them though after they have peaked. Not too pretty as they they rot ;-)
I love the comment by Alexopolous on the development of the spore mass in Phallus: “Once the gleba has been exposed, it undergoes autodigestion, and the spores become enmeshed in a foul-smelling, gelatinous, greenish matrix that is said to be sweet, although how anyone had the fortitude to taste it in the fresh condition is beyond comprehension”.
[Alexopolous et al. 1996. Introductory Mycology. Wiley]