Devil's Dipstick

Devil's Dipstick (Mutinus elegans) is a common eastern North American stinkhorn, easily told by its slender, gracefully tapering form and its lack of a separate cap. Where Phallus species carry a distinct thimble-shaped head on a white stalk, Mutinus simply smears its spore slime over the upper part of the stalk itself.

The fruit body emerges from a whitish to pale pink egg, 2-4 cm across, sitting at or just below the surface of mulch or woodland soil. Expansion is fast, and the mature structure stands 10-18 cm tall, curving slightly, brilliant orange to orange-red at the tip and fading to pale pink, salmon or whitish toward the base.

Like all stinkhorns it is short-lived, sagging and collapsing within a day or two once the flies have stripped the gleba. Its strong odour and lurid colour make it conspicuous in suburban plantings, where it appears with some regularity in fresh hardwood mulch.

Fruiting body

A single hollow, spongy column 10-18 cm tall and 1-2 cm thick, tapering gradually to a narrow, often slightly bent or pointed apex. There is no separate cap and no ring. The colour grades from bright orange or orange-red at the top through salmon and pink to nearly white at the base.

Gleba

The upper quarter to third of the column is coated with a dark olive-brown to blackish-green slime that holds the spores. It is not carried on a detachable head but lies directly on the wrinkled surface of the stalk. As insects remove it, the underlying orange, finely pitted tissue is exposed.

Base and volva

The base sits in a white to pale pinkish, saccate volva, the ruptured remains of the egg, usually half buried, with white rhizomorphs anchoring it in the substrate. Slicing an unopened egg shows the folded column in a clear gelatinous matrix.

Flesh and spores

The wall of the column is spongy and chambered, brittle, whitish to pale orange inside, and does not change colour on bruising. Spores are dispersed in the slime by insects, so no spore print is obtainable.

This stinkhorn is a decomposer of woody debris and rich organic matter. It fruits in hardwood woodchip mulch, garden borders, compost, sawdust piles, leaf litter, rotting stumps and the soil of moist deciduous woodland, frequently in small scattered groups where the mycelium has colonised a patch of mulch.

It is widespread in eastern North America from the Great Lakes and New England south to the Gulf, with scattered records west and in eastern Asia. Fruiting runs through the warm, wet part of the year, typically July to October, and follows heavy summer rain.

Mutinus elegans is saprophytic, rotting cellulose- and lignin-rich woody material. Its mycelium forms whitish cords through mulch and can produce successive crops of eggs from the same colonised patch across a season and from year to year.

Spore dispersal is insect-mediated. The pungent odour of the gleba attracts flies and beetles, which land on the slimy apex, feed, and leave with spores adhering to their bodies. Because dispersal does not depend on wind, the fungus can fruit at ground level in still, sheltered garden settings where a wind-dispersed mushroom would be at a disadvantage.

Mutinus caninus is more slender and paler, mostly whitish to pale yellow with a small, clearly delimited orange-red head that is set off from the stalk by a slight constriction, whereas M. elegans grades smoothly from orange tip to pale base. Mutinus ravenelii is stouter, pinker overall, and has an abruptly demarcated swollen head, giving a blunter silhouette than the long taper of M. elegans.

Phallus impudicus and P. rubicundus are separated at a glance by having a distinct, separate, honeycomb-pitted cap draped over the top of the stalk; in Phallus the cap can be lifted free, in Mutinus the slime lies directly on the fused stalk tissue. Immature stinkhorn eggs of all these species look alike from outside and must be cut vertically to reveal the colour and shape of the folded fruit body within.