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Animals aren’t the only ones bringing the stink to the table. You probably know the corpse flower, a botanical menace that blooms with the scent of rotting meat. Same with Bulbophyllum phalaenispis. Nasty.
But let’s talk about the elegant stinkhorn (Mutinus elegans ). It’s a fungus. It looks like a penis. It smells like rotting flesh. The name alone — “elegant” — feels like a joke played on anyone who actually sees it.
Also known as the devil’s dipstick. A fitting nickname.
You’ll find them across eastern North America. Spring to early winter is their prime season. Europe and Asia have a few spots too. They like temperate zones, loose soil, warm rain. Gardens, mulch beds, forest floors, rotting wood debris. If the weather is wet and mild, they spring up. Four to six inches tall. Short life, high drama. A mature specimen lasts a day maybe two before collapsing into nothingness.
Why so smelly?
“All of that stench comes from dark slime on the tip.”
That slime is the gleba. It’s the spore mass. It’s vile, purposefully so. The fungus wants flies. It wants bugs. When an insect catches a whiff of decaying meat, it lands on the tip. Gets coated in spores. Flies off. Spreads the goods. More stinkhorns pop up somewhere else. Evolution is gross but effective.
Did I mention they looked offensive to Victorians?
Henrietta Darwin — Etty, her sister’s niece — reportedly hated them. She called them morally hazardous. Naturalist Charles Darwin had a daughter who waged war on these mushrooms. Armed with a spear. Roaming the woods. Hunting them by smell. She’d poke the “putrid carcass” into her basket. Then burn them. All to protect “the morals of the maids.”
Imagine hunting a fungus for morality’s sake.
If you see one in the wild, don’t panic. It’s not poisonous. Won’t hurt your health beyond annoying your nose.
Still shouldn’t eat it though.
Why? Just why?
