In the Company of Mushrooms

Written by J. Mitchell Brown

have this friend who lives in a spectacular home on the banks of the May River. I was tooling around the neighborhood one day and figured I’d pop my head in and shoot the breeze with her for awhile. It had been some time since we had spoken, and, upon seeing her car in the garage, I decided on the spur of the moment to go run in and say “Hello.”

As I walked down her driveway toward the river and porches overlooking the bluff, I tried to figure out what constitutes a “front” yard for a riverfront home? Certainly, I would think it would be the river-side, but the “front” stoop was pointed towards the road. I always prefer to be a back-door guest, but was I really walking in the “front” door of this home? Should I go around to the front so I could be a back-door friend? I got very confused and nearly forgot who I was and where I was going in the first place.

I turned the corner and walked up the tabby steps when it hit me. A putrid odor wafted over my nostrils and nearly knocked me down. I looked around to see who the offender was. I gagged. Lifting my feet, I checked each sole for dog poo. Some dry heaves. I saw my friend through the starlight of my tearing eyes sitting on her couch working a crossword puzzle.

There were about ten feet between me and the door. I lurched, half clawing, half banging to get in. Startled, Loretta, jumped up and opened the door for me.

Futilely trying to maintain my composure, I greeted my friend between gasps and coughs, “Hey……Lo……retta……..I just wanted…..to drop…..by…….and say……Hello.”

She eased me into a comfortable conversation and I found myself staring at her, wondering if she had gone mad. Did she not see that fog of Eau de Stink out her back door? Had something happened since we had last spoken and had she lost her olfactory capabilities? I continued with our conversation, nodding appropriately and trilling politely at her jokes, but secretly I was scanning the room over her shoulder, planning my escape through the front/back door of her home. All I wanted to do was come by and say “Hello,” and now I was trapped like a rat in a chemical dump that would surely kill everyone in Southern Beaufort County. Maybe I should act as though I needed a bathroom break and call the “authorities.” It’s funny, Loretta didn’t look like a terrorist. I had known her for years and thought I knew a lot about her. I was shocked. Where did she get her toxins? How long had she been planning this? Why now, just before the holidays? It was all very sick.

“Hey, will you come outside and look at something for me?” she asked.
This was it. Either she was going to off me because I knew too much already or maybe she was going to confide in me and tell me her sinister plans to take over the world. If I could escape to warn everyone, I would be hero. “Sure, Loretta,” I said casually, as she led me outside. I studied the back of her head for the soft spot I could drop a pot on once my cover was blown.

She swung open the French doors, and although you would normally expect soft marsh breezes to serenade your senses, I found myself assaulted again with the stench of rotting meat. I gagged again.
“Exactly,” she said. “What in the world is it? It’s all over in my bushes.” She pointed down to a perfectly edged and horticultured bed with sago palms and nandina in it. Pointing up from the ground like some grotesque orange fingers were fungi, with slime on top. Some had curled up and wilted; others stood proudly, beckoning you to come closer. Little white eggs were located in odd spots in the bed.

“It’s…*ugh*…a…mushr…mushrrr…..*GAG*….mushroom called….a……STINKhorn.”

“Well, the name certainly fits,” Loretta said in her cultured Georgia accent, cool as a cucumber. “What can I do about it?”

“Well, Loretta, we can…..*gggrrrppp*….start by having this conversation…..elsewhere,” I begged.

Stinkhorns, in the mushroom family, are probably among the top of the list among some of God’s most vile creations. And unless you have actually been privy – or cursed – to actually smell one, you will not appreciate its overwhelming stench. There are no words in the English language that I can use to describe the smell. Rotting flesh is the closest descriptor, and it does not fit the bill.

Odors aside, though, the stinkhorn is a fascinating fungus. Its proper name, Elegant Stinkhorn (Mutinus elegans) certainly juxtaposes its foulness. But like all God’s creations, everything has a reason for being. The fetid smell from this plant, which is contained in a pungent ooze, attracts all sorts of scavengers such as flies, beetles, and even a few mammals. As these animals walk on, eat, or wallow in the mushrooms, they pick up spores and transfer them around through droppings and the like, thus assuring that the stinkhorn will populate locations outside of its immediate vicinity.

Stinkhorns are ridiculously short lived, though, and generally, a plant that is offending you in the morning, will often be dead by the afternoon (though that’s not to say that another one won’t be there to take its place). They begin their life cycle as a white globe resembling an egg, just below the soil’s surface. Like most fungi, stinkhorns thrive in rich, moist soil. When conditions are right, the egg will burst open and out of the center of it will sprout an orange stalk. Within a few hours, this stalk will reach six inches in height. The speed of this growth is accredited to a rapid intake of soil water and the fact that the tissue that makes up the walls of the plant are only a few cells thick. (Incidentally, if you can stand to be within inches of this plant for any period of time, take a close look at the walls of the plant. The cells are so big that they can be seen with the naked eye. Hold your nose, though.)

And, unfortunately for all of us, Loretta in particular, there is really nothing that you can do to rid your yard of these wretched things. You can pull up the eggs when you see them and you can pull up the fingers when they poke their heads up, but all you’re really doing is getting rid of the immediate problem. By the time you see either one of these, the spores have already planted themselves. Besides, by pulling up the plants, you will sprinkle spores on the ground which will grow into more stinkhorns anyway.

The best bet, other than paving your entire yard which would look rather silly, is to be like a sailor and hope for favoring winds.
And for the record, Loretta, I’ve got them in my yard, too. I can stop blaming the dog now. And sorry for thinking you were a terrorist, you sugar-sweet peach, you.