Mushroom of the Month: February, 2014

Their mass rotted off them flake by flake
Til the thick stalk stuck like a murderer’s stake,
Where rags of loose flesh yet tremble on high
Infecting the winds that wander by.
                from  The Sensitive Plant,  Percy Bysshe Shelley - circa 1820

Imagine this – you’re a young and growing mushroom fruit-body. In a short amount of time, you’ve been triggered to grow and burst forth from the ground with enough force to break through solid concrete. Once in the atmosphere you’ve been designed to seek, additional triggers create a wave of spores to be released from the bottom of your column-shaped cap. Now, in a seemingly bizarre move, you begin to breakdown the very fibers of your being, turning your once firm cap into a melting mass of black goo. Eventually, nothing is left of your white and scaly brown button but ghostly tatters of dripping, oozing black that flail from a defiantly upright and bony looking stipe…