With enough wood shaving to fill up the Grand Canyon around town, we are seeing some gross things popping up all over. These disgusting monsters rise out of the ground and smell comparable to the Walking Dead.
The stinkhorns have arrived, and it is enough to make one gag with the nauseous smell.
Stinkhorns are a type of mushroom from the Phallaceae family that arise in the landscape with their rancid stench. When the nights are a little cooler, the soil is moist and there is so much decaying material like roots and heavy wood mulch, these nasty fungi get my phone ringing.
Stinkhorns occur naturally and are spread by spores. As the mushrooms form, they are coated with a slime that smells as though every dog in the neighborhood has visited your flower bed three minutes before you step out into the yard.
These crazy looking fungi emerge from the ground and are covered in a putrid slime. The nasty smell attracts flies and when the pesky insects land on the oozy mushroom, the spores for the fungi attach to their feet and are off to be spread into nature.