Now and then, growing out of the mulch in front of my office
building, there’s an outcropping of the most amazing mushrooms:
“What in the hell are
they?” Apollonia squealed when I pointed the latest batch, which (as you can
see) are especially evil and healthy-looking. “They smell rotten. Can’t you smell
them?”
“Not a thing,” I said. (To be fair, I have a terrible sense
of smell.) “And they’re beautiful. What colors!”
I looked them up later. They are stinkhorns. (I always
thought “stinkhorn” was Apollonia’s maiden name.) They stake out lawns and
driveways, and keep coming back forever once they’ve established themselves.
They are Phallaceae, and if you look at the above
picture, the name will probably make sense to you. There are many horrifying
variants, but ours are Mutinus caninus, the “dog
stinkhorn,” and maybe the “dog” part will make sense to you too if you look at
the picture again. Stinkhorns are gooey and disgusting on purpose. They attract
bugs with their smell and nasty texture, and the flies and ants carry the
spores around. They start as an egglike growth like a puffball, and then – in
just a few hours – they manifest their adult form. Here’s a time-lapse film of twenty
hours in the life of a dog stinkhorn:
Nature is trying to send us a message through organisms like
these.
But what’s the message, do you suppose?
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