Stinkhorns live up to their name
By PAUL G. JANTZEN
Contributing writer
While scanning the grassy area near our house, something red attracted my attention. Three fruiting bodies of a fungus extended up from the ground. The largest of these was nearly the size of my thumb and stood 7.5 cm tall; the stalk and somewhat flattened ball on top were about 2 cm wide. Six flies were crawling over the round ball on top.
Referring to A Guide to Kansas Mushrooms led me to a colored photo of a small stinkhorn mushroom, an exact match to those in front of me. The head of this stinkhorn is covered with a course orange-red network or lattice. In the depressions formed by the loose network is a slime that smells like very rotten meat or dung which attracts insects, especially flies. The flies crawl over the slime, eat it, and disperse the reproductive spores in it to other areas.
Eight days later, on Oct. 9, additional msuhrooms appeared. I called Elaine and neighbor Elmer Mickey to come and see the newcomers. Both got on their knees to smell the mushrooms. Elmer then reported that he had detected the same foul odor several days earlier as he was moving his lawn near our property line. He inspected his basement but found no source of a musty odor there. It must be the Jantzens. So discovering the stinkhorns in our backyard has established our reputation in this neighborhood.
This fungus, Simblum sphaerocephalum, lives in the soil and, when moisture and temperature are just right, produces a white egg-like ball from which the orange-red sphere and stalk emerge to attract another generation of flies.
This stinkhorn fungus is occasionally found in prairies, lawns, and even cultivated fields in May, October, and November.
I didn't see these stinkhorns emerge from their "eggs" but the full expansion of the fruiting bodies of some species occurs in less than two hours.
The fungi comprise their own kingdom, quite separate from the animal and plant kingdoms. Animal cells have no rigid walls enclosing their cell membranes. Plants have cell walls composed of cellulose, and their cells contain chlorophyll which utilizes the energy of sunlight to convert carbon dioxide and water into carbohydrates. Fungi have cell walls containing cellulose plus chitin, a protein also found in the external skeletons of insects. Like animals, fungi have no chlorophyll, hence they cannot manufacture carbohydrates. They secrete enzymes that digest organic matter in their surroundings and then absorb it. They are among nature's great recyclers of dead organic matter.
While the "eggs" of some stinkhorns are edible, the edibility of this species is unknown. It is best not to try them.
