Sad Stinkhorn. If only it had access to the little blue pill!

I covered a new species of African Lacy Stinkhorn in a post here before, but let’s face it: there’s no such thing as too many stinkhorn posts. For those of you who need a refresher, stinkhorns are fungi that hatch from “eggs” enveloped by a peridium (you can see the remains of the peridium at the tip of the head, or receptacle, and at the base of the stalk, above). Some brave souls profess to enjoy eating the eggs. Once the mushrooms hatch and reveal that they are, in fact, quite happy to see the world, they spread their spores by giving them that special odeur de corpse, thereby attracting flies who do the two-step in the sticky, slimy mass of spores at the tip. The flies eat some of the mess; some of the rest clings to their feet. When the flies land elsewhere (i.e. nearby soil, a garbage can, or your sleeping forehead) the spores are deposited  in a new, hopefully stinkhorn-friendly place. Then the spore germinates, and microscopic filaments called hyphae spread out through the soil to . . . I’m not exactly sure what. The one thing I cannot discover is whether stinkhorn fungi are wood rotters or symbionts (partners) with the roots of trees or other plants, the two chief fungal m.o.s.

They’re in the same general group as the gilled mushrooms, but in a special family all their own called the Phallaceae. (Fal-ace’-ee-ay) Some of their brethren are among the most striking fungi on the planet: the earth stars, earth cages, and the lacy stinkhorns, which have a demure, delicate skirt jarringly draped around the obscene fungus. This group, in turn, is in the Agaricomycetes (the mushrooms and friends) which is in turn in the Basidiomycota, which those of you who are *really* good will remember are the fungi that make their spores on club-shaped cells called basidia. Basidiomycota are one of the basic, top-level groups of fungi.

When I first spotted this particular specimen on Wednesday, it was standing tall and proud. But alas, by yesterday, it had toppled over into this sorry state. That wasn’t discouraging to a nearby retinue of flies, so perhaps the stinkhorn wasn’t so sad as I’m making out . . .

To see how the stinkhorns, et al, fit into to the life family tree, look for Phallomycetidae here. Click the arrow at left to back out, or follow the link of the group’s name to see a bit more about who they’re related to.

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.