Mutinus ravenelii: The Ultimate Mushroom Guide

About The Mutinus ravenelii Mushroom

The "eggs" of Mutinus ravenelii are edible while the adult fungus itself is not yet known to be edible. Ultimate Mushroom does not recommend eating this fungus.

This stinkhorn is a widespread mushroom that is recognized by its red gleba covered in olivaceous slime and its white reticulate stipe with an elongated white volva.

It fruits under conifers, on old well-rotted conifer stumps, and in the grass near flower beds.

The mature fruit body is about 5 cm tall and the ellipsoid "egg" stages only a centimeter or so tall. The bright red cap is at first hidden by a dark, olive-green mass that is a mixture of spores, sugars, and evil-smelling goo. This is a sugary, smelly mixture and is attractive to flies (particularly bluebottles) that feast avidly on the mixture.

The spores contaminate the bodies of the flies and are carried off to new sites for growth or are perhaps defecated in a viable condition.

Other names: Dog Stinkhorn, Red Stinkhorn.

Mutinus ravenelii Identification

1. Egg

   The immature fruiting body is a white to pale pink egg-shaped sac, up to 30 mm, encasing the stinkhorn in a gelatinous substance.

   The egg-like sac splits to release the rapidly expanding fruiting body and leaves an elongated volva at the base.

   Often found with several eggs growing together.

2. Gleba (fertile spore mass)

   Sharply conical; to 15×10 mm; covered by an olivaceous thick slime which is cleared by visiting insects exposing a red surface; apex perforate.

3. Stipe

   Cylindrical, narrowing towards the apex, hollow; 40 - 120×10 - 15 mm; spongy, dry, reticulate; white overall or slightly pinkish at apex; with an elongated whitish volva.

4. Flesh: spongy.

5. Smell: foetid, like rotting meat, but faint compared to other Phallales.

6. Spore print: olivaceous brown.

Mutinus ravenelii profile

1. Color: Red | Dark

2. Shape: Stinkhorns