Weird-looking fungus pops up in Kelowna backyard
Brooke Turner found a few phallic looking mushrooms growing in her Kelowna backyard she’d never seen before and snapped a few photos of them earlier this week.
“Aren’t they odd? I’d like to know what they are,” Turner said. “I’m so curious to know what the weird fungus is."
The brightly coloured mushrooms are growing in a grassy area that's watered regularly and are about four to five inches tall.
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Charles Ruechel, an owner at Elements Adventure Company based out of Vernon, is also a wild mushroom expert and runs mushroom tours in the Okanagan. After viewing the photos, he said the "weird fungus” in Turner’s backyard is a stinkhorn in the genus phallaceae.
“Looks like a nice specimen of a stinkhorn,” he said. “If you touch the tip there is a slimy layer called gleba. It smells like poo or dead meat. I picked one up and it smelled like my newborn baby’s diaper."
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Ruechel said the gleba has spores in it and the stink has a function. The smell attracts flies that get the slimy stuff on their feet and distribute the spores.
“There is an oval structure called an egg that forms underground and erupts into the little phalluses,” he said. “They are short lasting and not poisonous to touch."
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