Wild in the city: A whole world of smut at our feet

Carry On smelling: the stinkhorn gives off a foul smell to attract flies
Isabel Hardman
Isabel Hardman16 November 2020

This has been a fantastic autumn for fungi. Most of us think only of the fairytale red-and-white spotted fly agaric toadstool when these organisms are mentioned, or perhaps the oyster and ceps mushrooms that pop up in posh risottos. But go fungi-hunting in your local park or back garden and you’re as likely to find something that’s a little less dainty and rather more filthy.  

The stinkhorn looks more like the sort of thing you’d find in an obscene photo on Snapchat than growing in the wild. Its scientific name phallus impudicus tells you everything you think you need to know about its form. Its common name warns you about the foul smell. But it’s even worse than the name suggests. The bell-shaped end is covered in a grey-brown slime which attracts flies. Hidden in the slime are the spores which the flies eat and distribute. The stinkhorn has two stages: the first is a low-lying white “egg” from which the phallic body then sprouts, meaning it really does appear to have balls at its base. Once the flies have done their job, the fruiting body collapses into a flat, flaccid mess.  Another Carry On-style mushroom that’s easy to find feasting on fallen leaves and rotten wood is the rosy bonnet, mycena rosea. Do not be deceived by the cutesy name: this fungus looks alarmingly like a large nipple. It often grows in groups, and so you won’t have to hunt long before you find a pair of these pink, tapering, little mushrooms growing together.  

Isabel Hardman

Of course, many wild mushrooms are very pretty and far better-suited to the pages of a family newspaper. There are vivid blue fungi, rich purple ones and gorgeous rainbow-coloured waxcaps. It’s just that the stinkhorn and the rosy bonnet are a testament either to nature’s ability to produce things which are so ridiculous they seem quite unnatural — or at the very least to our tendency to see smut everywhere. As it happens, smut is another type of fungus, which just shows how keen this strange kingdom is to make us giggle.  

Isabel Hardman is assistant editor of the Spectator and author of  The Natural Health Service

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