“The cage fungus looks and smells like decaying meat — on purpose. Its goopy lattice gives off a rotten odor that attracts flies, which help spread its spores far and wide. It’s like a bee to a flower, but way more macabre and putrid.”
The basket stinkhorn. Craypot stinkhorn. Colus pusillus… or the related Clathrus ruber, a fungus that’s found across the globe. Learn how this mushroom uses its growing network of mycelium to eat wood and plant waste below ground, eventually producing a spongy, bright red, cage-like growth that reeks above ground. This KQED Deep Look episode shares its stinky strategy.
Watch these related videos next on TKSST:
• This giant plant looks like raw meat & smells like dead rat
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• Hydnora africana, the strangest plant in the world?
• Fungus: The Plastic of the Future
• The Wood Wide Web: How trees secretly talk to and share with each other
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