Mutinus caninus (dog stinkhorn)
I found these stinkhorn ‘eggs’ (first picture) almost a month ago, and have been (somewhat obsessively) checking back on them every few days ever since, documenting their progress. I was delighted to find that they had finally emerged today, and revealed themselves to be dog stinkhorns, rather than the common stinkhorns I had assumed they were (it’s difficult to tell from the eggs, even for people far more practiced than myself).
Stinkhorns are perhaps the most alien mushrooms I know of, starting off life in an egg-like sack, from which they rapidly emerge, their tip covered in smelly slime (gleba) which attracts the flies that carry their spores far and wide.
Dog stinkhorns are among the least smelly of the stinkhorns - common stinkhorns and the rarer (in Britain) Clathrus species stink like rotting meat. By contrast, dog stinkhorns have a mild, off-putting smell that I couldn’t detect until my nose was only a few inches away from them.
Once the olive green slime (visible beneath the remains of the egg veil on the tip) is eaten away by flies, a reddish tip will be revealed beneath. Then, a few hours to two days later, the fungus will wither away, leaving very little trace of its existence aside from the remains of the egg at its base.
Like many stinkhorns, some field guides list the eggs as edible, though not much sought after. The mature specimens are potentially poisonous, as people have reported their dogs becoming very ill after eating them, and anyway are not an appealing meal prospect.
