Devil's Fingers

Devil's Fingers is among the most theatrical fungi in the world. The egg stage is unremarkable — a whitish to greyish-pink ball half-sunk in litter — but expansion produces a set of tapering scarlet arms that push upward joined at their tips, then separate and bend down to leave a star or octopus shape sitting on the ground.

The species is placed in Clathrus (family Phallaceae), the same genus as the closed-lattice Red Cage, and was long treated under the separate name Anthurus archeri. Its arms are essentially a lattice that never fuses along its length, opening instead into free rays.

Native to Australia, Tasmania and New Zealand, it has become established across much of Europe and is now found in scattered localities elsewhere. The bright colour, the wrinkled arm surfaces and the strong odour make it hard to mistake for anything else once fully open.

Egg and emergence

The egg is 3–6 cm across, whitish, greyish or faintly pink, softly leathery outside and gelatinous within, with a white cord below. As it splits, the arms emerge fused at their apex like a closed hand or a tulip bud before spreading.

Arms

There are usually four to eight arms, each 4–10 cm long, tapering, spongy and chambered, wrinkled and pitted on the outer surface. Colour is scarlet to pinkish-red, often paler and whitish where the arms meet at the very base. The arms may remain arched or flatten right onto the litter.

Gleba, base and flesh

Dark olive-brown to blackish spore slime is spread in irregular blotches and transverse bands along the inner (upper) surface of each arm, giving a spotted look distinct from the even coating of column-shaped stinkhorns. The arms rise from a very short, pale, chambered pseudostipe seated in a persistent whitish to pinkish volva. The tissue throughout is fragile, water-filled and collapses to a slimy heap within a day or so.

This is a litter and mulch decomposer of woodland edges, hedgerows, plantation floors, parkland and gardens. It fruits in deep leaf litter, needle duff, wood chips, sawdust and compost-enriched soil, often in small groups where several eggs mature together.

Fruiting runs from summer into late autumn after rain in mild weather. Its natural home is Australasia; in Europe it has spread steadily since the early twentieth century and is now regular in Britain, France, Germany and neighbouring countries, with introductions reported from North America and Asia.

Clathrus archeri is saprobic, decaying woody fragments, bark and plant litter. Its rhizomorphs are white and cord-like, running through the litter layer and swelling into eggs at intervals, so fruiting is often clustered.

The fetid gleba draws flies and beetles that land on the outspread arms, and the outstretched star shape gives insects a broad landing platform close to the ground. Spores stick to visiting insects or pass through them, achieving dispersal without any wind-borne spore drop.

Aseroe rubra also has red rays, but they radiate from a distinct flattened disc on top of a hollow whitish stalk, and each ray is forked into two slender tips, with the gleba concentrated in the central depression rather than smeared along the arms. Pseudocolus fusiformis is much smaller, with usually three tapering arms that stay joined at the apex and rise from a short pale stalk.

Clathrus ruber differs plainly in that its arms are fused throughout into a closed hollow ball. Lysurus mokusin has an obviously fluted, ribbed column with only short arms at the summit. Unopened eggs of C. archeri resemble small puffballs externally, but sectioning shows the gelatinous layer and the folded red arms already formed inside.