Clathrus archeri: The Ultimate Mushroom Guide

About The Clathrus archeri Mushroom

Clathrus archeri is commonly known as Octopus Stinkhorn, or Devil’s Finger, is a fungus indigenous to Australia and New Zealand. Also, it is introduced species in Europe, North America, and Asia.

Devil’s Finger is not proven to be toxic, but it is treated as a suspect, can tolerate the stench it’s a risky snack.

The eggs of numerous stinkhorns are edible, but there are no archives of fights having taken place over these delicacies as there surely are over truffles, morels and some kinds of edible boletes. The arms of Devil’s Fingers emerge vertically and spread out, making the gleba accessible to insects.

In many parts of the USA, it is referred to as the Octopus Fungus.

A large, starfish-like fruit-body whose 4 to 8 arched red arms are coated with a smelly gleba on the upper surface, the mature fruit-body is typically 20 cm across with arms arching to 10 cm in height. Devils Finger habitually is a saprobic and mainly found in leaf litter under trees and shrubs; also increasingly on bark mulch in parks and gardens.

The young fungus erupts from a sub-erumpent egg by forming into four to seven elongated slender arms originally erect and attached at the top. After that arms unfold to reveal a pinkish-red interior covered with a dark-olive spore-containing gleba.

Therefore, at the time of maturity, it smells like putrid flesh. Before rupturing the ball or egg of Clathrus archeri is typically 2 to 3 cm in diameter.

Gregarious to clustered in moist, shaded gardens and plant nurseries; fruiting during the warmer months of the year; an introduced species; uncommon.

Clathrus archeri Timelapse

Clathrus archeri Classification

In 1860 British mycologist Miles Joseph Berkeley described this species and gave it the scientific name Lysurus archeri, thereby establishing its basionym. When this rare (in Europe) fungus was moved to the genus Clathrus by British mycologist Donald Malcolm Dring (1932-1978) in his 1980 monograph on the family Clathraceae, its name became Clathrus archeri. Dring, who worked at Kew Gardens, died suddenly at the age of just 46 - a sad loss to mycology.

Synonyms of Clathrus archeri include Aseroë rubra sensu auct. (= various authors), Anthurus archeri (Berk.) E. Fisher, and Lysurus archeri Berk.