#Dave Roberts#
Starfish fungus/Anemone Stinkhorn - Aseroe rubra - Surrey, UK
More info below, borrowed from www.newscientist.com/blog/lastword/2008/02/fly-catcher.html
The fungus is Aseroe rubra, literally "disgusting red", whose common names include sea anemone, starfish and stinkhorn fungus. Found in Tasmania and as far north as south-east Queensland, it has the distinction of being the first fungus from Australia to be scientifically described. It was named, no doubt after he smelled it, by botanist Jacques Labillardiere at Recherche Bay, Tasmania, in 1792.
The fungus appears to do a good job of mimicking a wound on an animal - an interesting piece of evolution, if true. It looks a bit like a fly trap, but it doesn't catch or eat flies. Instead, it uses them to spread its spores. For food it uses wood in the mulch or forest litter that it inhabits.
The fruiting body in the photo shows the smelly black spore slime that acts as a fly attractant. I find its odour more like that of rotting teeth than rotting flesh, a concentrated essence de caries.
The fruiting body only lasts a few days but rewards quiet observation. Our Aseroe specimens attract the rather beautiful, though agriculturally troublesome, green blowfly.
Kevin Maher, Witta, Queensland, Australia
By Blogger Michael Marshall on October 29, 2008 4:36 PM
Curiously, this fungus has leapt several continents and established itself in the UK on Oxshott Heath in Surrey, where it has been appearing exotically for the last 10 years or more.
The fungal fruiting body doesn't catch flies any more than a ripe apple catches wasps. The flies (which tend to be mainly bluebottles in the UK) are attracted to the carrion smell of the slimy spore mass supported on the tentacle-like arms. The slime contains sugars and the flies ingest it, spores and all. These pass through the gut unharmed and are dispersed elsewhere. The fungus itself - visible as a white mycelium - lives on rotten, often buried, wood.
A related Australian species with longer tentacles, Clathrus archeri or the devil's fingers, has also become established in southern England and is now quite widespread, as is the European Clathrus ruber, or cage fungus, whose tentacles mesh to form a cage-like receptacle.
More common and more familiar is our native stinkhorn, which also lures flies to help spread its spores. The stinkhorn forms fruiting bodies as obvious as the plant's Latin name, Phallus impudicus, suggests. It is said that Charles Darwin's daughter Etty used to rise early to destroy any that she found, in order to ensure that the morals of her maids were not corrupted.
Peter Roberts, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Surrey, UK
Starfish fungus/Anemone Stinkhorn - Aseroe rubra - Surrey, UK
More info below, borrowed from www.newscientist.com/blog/lastword/2008/02/fly-catcher.html
The fungus is Aseroe rubra, literally "disgusting red", whose common names include sea anemone, starfish and stinkhorn fungus. Found in Tasmania and as far north as south-east Queensland, it has the distinction of being the first fungus from Australia to be scientifically described. It was named, no doubt after he smelled it, by botanist Jacques Labillardiere at Recherche Bay, Tasmania, in 1792.
The fungus appears to do a good job of mimicking a wound on an animal - an interesting piece of evolution, if true. It looks a bit like a fly trap, but it doesn't catch or eat flies. Instead, it uses them to spread its spores. For food it uses wood in the mulch or forest litter that it inhabits.
The fruiting body in the photo shows the smelly black spore slime that acts as a fly attractant. I find its odour more like that of rotting teeth than rotting flesh, a concentrated essence de caries.
The fruiting body only lasts a few days but rewards quiet observation. Our Aseroe specimens attract the rather beautiful, though agriculturally troublesome, green blowfly.
Kevin Maher, Witta, Queensland, Australia
By Blogger Michael Marshall on October 29, 2008 4:36 PM
Curiously, this fungus has leapt several continents and established itself in the UK on Oxshott Heath in Surrey, where it has been appearing exotically for the last 10 years or more.
The fungal fruiting body doesn't catch flies any more than a ripe apple catches wasps. The flies (which tend to be mainly bluebottles in the UK) are attracted to the carrion smell of the slimy spore mass supported on the tentacle-like arms. The slime contains sugars and the flies ingest it, spores and all. These pass through the gut unharmed and are dispersed elsewhere. The fungus itself - visible as a white mycelium - lives on rotten, often buried, wood.
A related Australian species with longer tentacles, Clathrus archeri or the devil's fingers, has also become established in southern England and is now quite widespread, as is the European Clathrus ruber, or cage fungus, whose tentacles mesh to form a cage-like receptacle.
More common and more familiar is our native stinkhorn, which also lures flies to help spread its spores. The stinkhorn forms fruiting bodies as obvious as the plant's Latin name, Phallus impudicus, suggests. It is said that Charles Darwin's daughter Etty used to rise early to destroy any that she found, in order to ensure that the morals of her maids were not corrupted.
Peter Roberts, Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, Surrey, UK