Tales from the Wood (The Stinkhorn)

There is a bit of a storm blowing in at the moment. It has got a bit crazy and prompted a quick look at the BBC weather forecast. I see that “extreme rain” is forecast on my head in the next couple of hours.

So settle down and I will tell you a story instead…

Nature has so many different and wonderful ways of reproducing a species. Sometimes she can be very imaginative. Such is the case with today’s subject,

Phallus impudicus, the Stinkhorn Fungus.

Now even if you only got a B in Latin you can probably figure out the meaning of the name Phallus impudicus and a fungus that looks like this has obviously attracted quite a few common names. I don’t think that it is necessary to repeat them here, this is a serious nature observation.

I do feel a little bit sorry for this fungi because of all the means of reproduction that are available this seems to be one of the least rewarding and maybe Mother Nature was in a bit of a mood when she came up with this idea.

The spores that will ensure the continuation of this species are contained in the green slime that covers the cap of the fungus. That slime is known as the “Gleba”. It stinks of rotting flesh. Flies are drawn to the smell and quickly strip the gleba away. The gleba not only smells disgusting but it gives the flies diarrhoea thus ensuring that the spores fall locally in an area that is suitable for them to grow.

This is a Witch’s Egg. That is the only name that I have ever known for it but witches don’t come out of these, Stinkhorns do. This is an immature Stinkhorn Fungi.

When I found this I was quite excited, I already knew quite a bit about Stinkhorns. When they burst out of the egg they grow very quickly, they have been recorded growing six inches in an hour I was determined to video and photograph this event.

I found it on a Friday morning. I was down for a three day camp in the woods. I watched my mushroom very carefully…. for three days. Eventually on Sunday afternoon I had to give it up. It hadn’t done a thing and I went home very disappointed.

I went back to the wood the following Saturday and it was still there, so I resumed my watch. I slept in the wood that night and when I went to check it in the morning it had grown and I had missed it. By the time that I arrived on the scene it was already fully grown and half devoured and I could only watch the last part of the act.

I had to switch to flash to record what happened next, it was just too dark in the wood for my camera of the time.

The delicious gleba drove the flies into a frenzy

It only took them about an hour to finish the whole thing.

So lessons learnt. If you ever find a Stinkhorn in the woods in good condition take lots of photographs, they really don’t stay in that condition for very long, the flies find them and strip them very quickly. If you find a Witch’s Egg you will need lots of sandwiches and a flask and you have to watch it very carefully. They are very tricky things.

Final bit of information, the Stinkhorn is edible and consumed with relish in France and Germany. I don’t actually fancy this one myself.

Animal Magic

“Just like that”

It’s your destiny

The Swallows have fledged, or at least they are fledging. They are still in the nest today but they have been out and they can fly.

It has taken me a few days watching and all that you get are a couple of short video’s but for me, my understanding and the pleasure that I got from watching them makes a few days just a drop in the ocean. It was time well spent.

Anyway you should be glad that you don’t have to watch the whole twenty hours of video, that I now have to sort and delete from my machine to free up space.

Here are the best bits.

Yesterday morning there were five birds on the nest, there were five birds on the nest and then there were four birds on the nest. I had missed the very first flight and only realised when number five returned to the nest.

This first video starts with the mother calling for them to leave the nest, there is a little comic interlude of the way that they follow flies, their little heads bobbing in unison and in the last bit the second bird to approach the nest is the returning chick. Does he bring food back or do the others just think that he has?

This next video shows them leaving the nest and returning. They spent most of the day fluttering around inside the little alley way that has become their home and by the end of the day they were all settled back on the nest but this is fledging. Today I think that they have ventured outside and seen the blue sky but they still return to the nest.

These birds have made me think a lot about nature as a whole thing and about life and death in the wild. The caterpillars that I am trying to raise are falling to the parasitoid flies that these Swallows depend on for food and survival. The parents have done a really good job of raising them given the wet weather we have been having. I have often looked out in the pouring rain and wondered how they are managing to raise a brood and now this, flight.

I am so in in love and in awe of them and so damned jealous.

I am jealous because they get to eat those delicious crunchy flies, or perhaps because they can raise offspring in a matter of weeks and not the 26 years it usually takes us. Maybe I am jealous of something else altogether…..