Urban mushoom!
Some day I'll present the mushrooms that occur in urban (man-made or strongly human-influenced) environments. Winecaps, oysters, turkey tail, earthballs, mica caps, stuff like that. What format should I use? Should I have a website, a zine, something else? Why does my internal voice sound like Marc Maron? I think between his podcast and the new CD I've been overdoing it--maybe it's the coffee: POW!
Anyway, this is Mutinus caninus, the dog stinkhorn, famous for really really really looking like a dog's penis. We had fun with it when it was 365 urban species #175. Like other stinkhorns, it produces a bad-smelling mass of spores called a "gleba" which attracts coprophagic insects to spread its spores around. At a recent mushroom lecture I attended, the presenter verified my suspicion that stinkhorns are relatively recently evolved (making them "more highly evolved" fungi than others, if you look at it that way, which I guess you shouldn't) since they depend on animals to reproduce (as do flowering plants, another relatively recently evolved group, by way of comparison). I don't know if that's why the ants are busying themselves about this mushroom or not. The fungus is commonly found in the wood chips and mulch of urban landscaping, as it is here at Franklin Park Zoo.
I identified another stinkhorn for someone via twitter recently, thus: "Phallus stinkhorns, complete with santorum-mimicking spore mass (gleba)." Yes I'm so proud of that, that I had to share it again. (Whoops, wrong podcast.)