It happens that nature suddenly opens its storerooms, and incredible, even creepy plants, about which few people know, are born into the light of day. For some of them there is no need at all to climb high mountains or to descend into the depths of the sea. Even the mushrooms themselves are mysterious and unusual. Most people, at the mention of them, represent boron, in which boletus or a lump of foliage flaunts on a thick leg. But the mushroom kingdom is huge and varied: from microscopic to huge specimens.
However, among them are especially unusual. Russian forests in this sense are quite harmless. Here you can find ordinary mushrooms, edible and inedible. But if you happen to be in a tropical forest, you can come across something that is also called mushrooms, but it causes the only desire - to run away.
What is it about? Almost frames of their "Aliens"
And you can’t believe your eyes anymore, because everything that happens seems like a movie from science fiction. Just now a tuber lying on the ground, a bit like a potato, and after a moment red fleshy tentacles laid out from it lay on the grass. And all the time it seems that these cute limbs will grab you now. Frankly speaking, the sight is creepy.
But there is no need to worry. Because this terrible creature is actually an earth mushroom. It is in this way that Archer (Clathrus archeri) from the Lattice family of the Veselkovye family — the mushroom “devil's fingers” - is born. Who would have thought that his appearance so did not match his name.
And yet it’s a mushroom!
Anturus Archer has a lot of names, but the most popular among them is “the fingers of the devil”. These are the same tentacles of red shades, on which, like suckers from the tentacles of an octopus, there are black spheres (hence another name - "octopus mushroom"). These black balls are gleb, emitting a rotten smell of rotten meat.
Aged mushroom "devil's fingers" is even worse. Its bright color disappears, and a monstrous pale hand remains, as if crawling out of the grave. The scent he exudes is akin to the smell of rotting flesh. He attracts insects to him, scattering spores of the fungus over long distances.
Where did this creepy mushroom come from?
How and where did the creepy mushroom “devil's fingers” come from? Where is it growing? It was first described in Tasmania and soon discovered in Australia, followed by New Zealand, Africa, the Center and Southeast Asia, South America, St. Helena and Mauritius.
Europe considers him an alien. No one knows the exact time he was brought here. It is assumed that he was accidentally brought to France from 1914 to 1920 from Australia, and possibly from New Zealand along with the wool supplied for the needs of the textile industry. Or maybe his disputes got here with Australian soldiers, participants in military operations on French territory in the First World War. Even if he was brought in by accident, he acclimatized quite successfully. This is how amazing the Australian Devil's Fingers look.
And here is the result
Since the mid-30s, terrible finds have been discovered in Europe. They are concentrated mainly in the Vosges mountains in eastern France, almost near the borders of Switzerland and Germany, crossed them and spread further: in Germany (in 1937), Switzerland (in 1942), England (in 1945), Austria (in 1948), Czech Republic (in 1963). After some 60 years, the mushroom has already mastered the Baltic coast. This happens pretty quickly. Fingers of the Devil, the world's most creepy mushroom, are found more and more often from Spain in the west to Ukraine and Poland in the east, from Scandinavia and Great Britain in the north to Balkan countries in the south.
The first find on the territory of the former Soviet Union was noted in Kazakhstan (Aktobe region) in 1953, the next - in the Ukrainian Carpathians in 1977. This tropical predator is met, though extremely rare, in Russia. It is possible that he was brought here with soil and seedlings, but in some southern and central regions he successfully established himself. So, isolated cases when Anturus Archer caught the eye of mushroom pickers were noted in the Sverdlovsk (1978) and Kaluga regions (2000s).
The “devil's fingers” mushroom is accustomed to living among mixed and deciduous forests, where it successfully survives on humus soils and rotting wood among the sands of desert and semi-desert. It begins to bloom from August to the end of October. The fungus is quite rare, but it can grow in considerable quantities, if weather conditions allow.
Mushroom "fingers of the devil": description
Mushroom Anturus Archer can even be called cunning. And all because at first he pretends to be a whitish toadstool, the most ordinary and unremarkable. This applies to the stage when it is in the form of an egg from 4 to 6 centimeters in diameter. When mushrooms are scattered in the forest, anything can be thought of, even taken as an alien creature.
But in fact, the egg has a multilayer structure:
- peridium - the upper layer;
- the mucous membrane, which in composition resembles jelly;
- the nucleus, which consists of a receptacle (what will become red petals) and in the center of the gleam (spore-bearing layer).
But time passes, and they begin to blossom. The spectacle is no less terrible when up to eight petals literally erupt from the bursting shell of the egg. At first they fused at the top, but soon they quickly separate and resemble lobes or even tentacles, like an octopus.
By the way, the “helicopter” metaphor would be more successful. Can you imagine an octopus traveling from one continent to another, as Anthurus Archer has done over the past hundred years? In the end, the fungus acquires the characteristic shape of a star or flower about 15 centimeters in diameter. Inside, the petals resemble a wrinkled porous sponge, by the way, quite brittle, with dark spots, like the suckers of an octopus. They are covered with spore-bearing mucosa, which is precisely the source of the intolerable stench. But she attracts flies successfully. And already insects carry on their feet the spores of this monster around. Of course, not the most common method among other fungi was chosen to disperse the spore, but it is certainly effective.
An interesting mushroom “devil's fingers” has no obvious leg. And when he leaves the egg, he lives only two or three days, after which he fades and dies. But this short period is enough to fulfill his function - the transfer of the seed, so that the genus continues.
Mushroom "fingers of the devil" - edible or not?
Indeed, an interesting question. So is it possible to eat the wonderful creation “the fingers of the devil”? You can eat a mushroom! I even found a daredevil in California who took a sample in the egg stage. His taste was, to put it mildly, very unpleasant, and the sensations after such a tasting are not the best, but memorable.
If you find yourself in conditions of survival, for example, in the desert, and there is no other food, then eat it. Do not starve to death! In all other cases, consider it inedible.
Almost relatives
With all its originality and dissimilarity to other inhabitants of the forests, there are species that are quite close and similar:
- Javanese flower tail (Pseudocolus fusiformis syn. Anthurus javanicus). You can meet him in the forests of Primorsky Krai. Visit the Nikitsky Botanical Garden (perhaps somewhere else) and find it in a tub where one of the tropical plants has been planted. Differs from Archera with petals converging at the top.
- Red Lattice (Clathrus ruber). This mushroom is very rare.
- Common Veselka (Hallus Impudicus). In the state of the egg, a considerable similarity is noted. It differs from the “fingers” only in the color on the cut; it is green in the fungus.
Fingers of the Devil on the World Wide Web
The mushroom Anthurus Archer, or “the fingers of the devil, ” is so unusual that anyone who meets it seeks to capture such a wonderful sight. And the Internet is literally flooded with a variety of photographs of this seemingly monster, but in fact it’s just a mushroom in all stages of its short life: from eggs scattered across the green forest to the pale, almost white “dead man’s hand” lying on the ground, as if it had burst through the grave through earthly stratum.
The very first appearance of his pictures on the Internet caused serious debate among users of the World Wide Web. The assumptions were very different: that the creature is of extraterrestrial origin, and the photo shows eggs in which the parasite embryo develops, or that this is the most common photomontage, and not reality.
Different "faces" Anturus Archer
A variety of associations arise for those who look at this marvelous earthly thing. Someone sees cacti in it, someone - cuttlefish, for someone it resembles a star or a flower, and someone immediately comes to mind the octopus tentacles.
Hence the numerous and such different names with which it is called:
- "Fingers of the devil"
- Fucking Fingers
- "Damn egg"
- Star mushroom
- "Stinking octopus horn",
- "Cuttlefish mushroom",
- "Stinky horn.
Anthurus Archer (Clathrus archeri) - etymology
Clathrus in translation means "deadbolt, lock" or "storage, cage". The word archeri comes from the name of the Irish mycologist W. Archer.
