Columned Stinkhorn

The Columned Stinkhorn shows an intermediate architecture between the closed lattice of the Red Cage and the free rays of Devil's Fingers. Its receptacle consists of a small number of stout vertical columns that rise separately from the volva and meet only at their tips, forming a rounded arch or vault.

It has been shuffled between genera over the years and appears in older literature as Linderia columnata or Linderiella columnata, though Clathrus columnatus remains the name in common use. The overall structure — spongy, chambered arms with gleba on the inner surfaces — is standard for the family Phallaceae.

It is a fungus of warm climates, familiar in the southeastern United States, the Gulf Coast, the Caribbean and many subtropical and tropical regions, and it has travelled with landscaping mulch to appear in gardens further north during hot summers.

Egg and structure

The egg is 2–4 cm across, whitish to dingy grey or pinkish, attached below by a whitish rhizomorph. On expansion, two to five (most often three or four) columns emerge and rise together to a height of about 4–10 cm.

Columns

Each column is thick, spongy and chambered, often somewhat flattened or grooved, and coloured orange to red-orange or pinkish, typically paler toward the base. The columns are clearly separate for most of their length and fuse only at the apex, leaving a wide open space beneath the arch.

Gleba and base

Dark olive-brown to blackish spore slime coats the inner faces of the columns near the apex, where they converge, so the top of the arch appears dark and wet while the outer surfaces stay bright. The columns emerge from a persistent whitish, sac-like volva, often partly buried, and the tissue is fragile and water-filled throughout, collapsing quickly after the gleba is removed.

This species is a decomposer found in wood chip mulch, bark beds, compost-amended garden soil, sandy lawns, dune scrub and open woodland litter. It favours warm, humid conditions and fruits in flushes after heavy rain, often scattered or in small groups across a mulched bed.

It is common along the southeastern United States and Gulf Coast, throughout the Caribbean, and in tropical and subtropical parts of the Americas, Africa, Asia and Australasia. Northward records generally trace back to mulch or nursery material moved by the landscaping trade.

Clathrus columnatus is saprobic, breaking down bark, wood fragments and other plant litter in the upper soil layer. Its mycelium runs as pale rhizomorphs through the substrate, and eggs form where these reach the surface, which is why fruitings often follow the line of a mulch bed.

As in all stinkhorns, spores are packed in a fetid slime that lures flies and other insects. Visitors land on the arch, feed on the gleba concentrated at the apex, and transport spores away, so no spore print is produced by the fruiting body.

Clathrus ruber forms an all-over closed lattice with polygonal windows, rather than a few free columns joined only at the top. Pseudocolus fusiformis is smaller, has arms that taper strongly and, crucially, rise from a distinct short whitish stalk above the volva instead of springing separately from the volva itself.

Lysurus periphragmoides carries a globose latticed head on a long, obvious pale stalk, a very different silhouette. Clathrus archeri opens into free spreading arms with no apical fusion at maturity. Where only the egg stage is present, a vertical cut reveals the folded orange columns inside a gelatinous layer, distinguishing it from firm, uniformly white puffballs.