I finally stole half an hour to pull out some old tomato plants and onions add a bit of compost to the vegie garden — and look what I uncovered. Damn, I thought, more plastic that got into the compost and didn’t compost.
But I couldn’t recall what on earth it might have been the framework of… and then I twigged.
I rushed inside and checked my fungi book; yep, incredible as it seemed, this was one of the really weird fungi. Of course the next step was to go to my website and click on the link for ‘Gaye’s fungi.’
Once there I clicked on her ‘White without gills’ category, scrolled down past some rather disgusting looking other fungi, and there it was:
Ileodictyon gracile (Smooth Cage) a stinkhorn fungus.
Gaye gives a very detailed life story for it, with photos from egg (yes, egg!) to final free-rolling lattice or basket form.
Who would dream up such a strange organism? I am still having trouble believing it.
That would have been even more weird!
Hi Sharyn,first time I saw one of these things, years ago, I accidentally scraped to top of the “egg” and this thing popped out, expanded and then started to roll across the sloping ground, towards me.
Talk about an Alien Life Form.
Fortunately, the panic subsided and then someone at the Botanic Gardens in Canberra told me what it was.
Amazing Fungi rule!
Denis