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veggie

Registered: 07/25/04
Posts: 17,504
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Mushroom-like plant at root of yard's odor problems [GA]
#5330969 - 02/23/06 09:24 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Mushroom-like plant at root of yard's odor problems February 23, 2006 - macon.com

Macon's Barbara Edwards enjoys watching crime shows on television.
A few weeks ago, she began to wonder if her yard was ripe for a scene from "CSI: Crime Scene Investigation."
It definitely smelled ripe, as if there was something dead in the yard. But although she searched and searched, she could find no body, human or animal.
Turns out, her yard was more suitable for an episode of a gardening show.
The "corpse" she couldn't find was actually a plant - an as yet unidentified variety of stinkhorn.
Stinkhorns are fungi related to mushrooms. Their unique characteristic is that when ripe, they are partially covered with a spore-filled slime that smells either like dung or rotting flesh. The smell attracts flies, other insects, snails and slugs. They in turn spread the spores that stick to their bodies or that they ingest to other areas, allowing the plants to propagate.
The stinkhorn Edwards discovered in her Lakewood Avenue yard, near the intersection of Napier Avenue and Ayers Road, was definitely of the type that smells like carrion.
"For a couple of weeks, a smell of rotting meat kept coming and going. It was awful. We have a lot of chipmunks and squirrels, and I've even seen raccoons along the little creek next to my shed, where the smell was strongest," Edwards said. "I never could find anything on the ground, so I thought some wild animal or someone's cat had crawled under the shed and died."
She even borrowed a friend's German shepherd to try to sniff out the corpse.
"I watch those crime shows and remembered one where they found a skull in a lake. I was afraid maybe something or part of someone had washed down the creek," Edwards said.
Finally, she remembered a similar smell from a plant, called a stinkhorn, that grew in her parent's Bloomfield yard when she was growing up. So she checked a leaf-filled ditch behind the shed and found a small, odd-looking pinkish red and orange plant that was definitely responsible for the odor.
Edwards said it didn't look like the plant she remembered from her youth, but after searching for stinkhorns on the Internet, she discovered a couple types of latticed stinkhorns that appeared similar to the one in her ditch.
According to the Web sites, www.mushroomexpert.com and www.hiddenforest.co.nz, stinkhorns are part of the Phallaceae family. There are a number of varieties, some with single rod-shaped pods, others with several arms that join at the top to form a latticed plant.
The ones in Edwards' yard resemble the latticed Anthurus archeri or Colus hirudinosus varieties.
The original plant she discovered has dried up, and it has to be held close to the nose to detect its odor. But scratching in the leaves around it, she has found several more white, egg-shaped pods of immature plants, a couple nearly ready to pop out.
"Once I learned what was causing the smell, that it wasn't anything dead, it didn't bother me so much," Edwards said. "But I don't want these things spreading all over, so I'll probably clean this ditch out and try to get rid of them."
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Anno
Experimenter



Registered: 06/17/99
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Re: Mushroom-like plant at root of yard's odor problems [GA] [Re: veggie]
#5335586 - 02/24/06 05:32 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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>The "corpse" she couldn't find was actually a plant
Plant??!!
>an as yet unidentified variety of stinkhorn.
Unidentified ? How about Clathrus columnatus
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RemainRandom50
Do You Need ToKnow Me?
Registered: 01/15/06
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Re: Mushroom-like plant at root of yard's odor problems [GA] [Re: Anno]
#5337365 - 02/25/06 08:36 AM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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lol wow i would be afraid of just standing near that thing looks like a fucking alien.
-------------------- At times I get consumed by my everyday life and will leave the Shroomery. Yet, every time drugs come falling into my life for fun.....I always think about the Shroomery and then I'm back!
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Randolph_Carter
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Re: Mushroom-like plant at root of yard's odor problems [GA] [Re: Anno]
#5339426 - 02/25/06 09:56 PM (17 years, 11 months ago) |
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Forgive the local paper reporter her ignorance.
-------------------- "..all those molecules thrashing their kinky little tails, hot for destiny and the street." Gibson Nuke baby seals for Jesus! (This has been a +1 production.)
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eris
underground


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Re: Mushroom-like plant at root of yard's odor problems [GA] [Re: veggie]
#5341540 - 02/26/06 03:40 PM (17 years, 10 months ago) |
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-------------------- Immortal / Temporarily Retired The OG Thread Killer My mushroom hunting gallery
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