Nature, You Are Amazing
I found this today as I was pulling weeds from my very neglected flower bed on the north side of the house. At first I was unsure if it was something that had been growing under all the weeds, or if it was a piece of plastic from a long forgotten toy, or something else entirely. It was just really strange to find amidst the weeds and wood chips. The more I looked at it the more I thought it was a fungus, so I pulled my phone from my jeans pocket and typed in "orange tube fungus" and the very first result was an image of this very odd-looking thingamajig. It is the mutinus elegans. I figured elegans meant elegant, and it does, so whoever named this certainly had a sense of humor. It really isn't all that elegant in my humble opinion. I read further and learned the fungus is more commonly referred to as the "elegant stinkhorn," the "dog stinkhorn," the "headless stinkhorn," or, and this is my personal favorite, the "devil's dipstick....