Isn't the autumn so lovely? The trees, slackers that they are, spend half the year naked, but we must admit they go out with a bang.
And of course one mustn't forget the DEVIL WEENIES COMING UP IN THE MULCH!
All right, so it's not actually an evil supernatural phenomenon, although I can imagine someone being scared silly the first time this appeared. And it does seem to fit October, Halloween, and 2020 pretty well.
What we have here is -- like so many things and people that are repellent -- a fungus. Stinkhorn is the vivid name for the obscene beast, "so called because the slime on the end of its fruiting body gives off an unpleasant odor," according to HGTV. I have not gotten close enough to verify that, nor do I intend to. Life has enough unpleasant odors without going out of one's way to sample more.
The dogs tend to like things that stink to high heaven, unfortunately, but this is a fenced-off area. They also have not shown any interest. Possibly because I've left the fungi alone to fung-die. The Penn Live site informs us that "They’re called 'stinkhorns' because of their odor when you knock them over." So we won't be doing that. Also, "From a gardener’s viewpoint, stinkhorns are actually beneficial in that they’re helping to decay wood and organic matter into nutrients that plants need to grow." Creative destruction, in other words.
It only seems to come up in the red mulch I use around the dahlias and rhododendrons and the mums and the one baby azalea. (Don't get the idea that I'm Joe Garden here; those plants all fit neatly along the front of the porch.) I'm sure black mulch has its own fun fungus, but we use the red stuff, so: devil weenies.
It'll probably all be gone by Halloween, which is too bad. I would display the evil stinkhorns with clip-on lights and encourage them to grow. That'd scare the kiddies. Although Governor Corleone might still shut down all the trick-or-treating in New York if he feels like it. Speaking of evil.
Regarding mulch fungi, we seem to regularly get a type that looks for all the world like a pile of dog vomit. We use brown hardwood mulch, and it doesn't seem to matter where we source it from - big-box store bags, local landscape store mulch piles, professional landscape company with boutique mulch sources - it always happens, usually in August. Unfortunately, its never inspired any dog we've had (yet) to produce their own samples out there, but rather in the house.
ReplyDeleteI've seen that too, Mongo, not here but while I was looking this stuff up. If fungus wants to be more socially acceptable it should become more attractive. That may seem shallow, but that's the world as we live in it.
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