Stinkhorn

Saturday I went to the Albuquerque flea market with Joyce and Kathryn, and I bought this pan:



Saturday night I made this bread in it:



While the bread was baking, I checked some blogs I try to keep up with. I saw a picture that finally, after many years, created a good connection to something I learned over 20 years ago. First, my own ancient photo with the notation that's on the back of it:




I realize the photo looks a little like Bigfoot or an alien, but I had no camera in 1982 with which to take a good close-up. The speciman was about 5" high.

A few years after I took that photo, I came across this page in my favorite big brown American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language.:

In case that's not legible, it says stinkhorn: any of several foul-smelling fungi of the order Phallales, such as Phallus impudicus or P. ravenelli, having a thick, cylindrical stalk and a narrow cap.

There that photo sat, stuck in that dictionary, until yesterday, when I saw this, on Rue's blog:


I showed Joyce Fetteroll and her daughter, Kathryn, who said my loaf of bread looked kind of like that too (and while working on this I saw that Schuyler has reported a similar incident).

If you go to Rue's blog, brace yourself for a little embarrassment. Her photos are more, uh... explicit than mine.

Here is another piece of connecting trivia, though. The brown dictionary in which I have kept that photo for over 20 years is the famous 1969 edition in which "the f-word" appeared. Here, from my own personal copy of the most controversial dictionary entry in my lifetime:



Keith asked if I didn't remember once at a campout in the Jemez mountains a similar mushroom growing up about 18" in about an hour and a half. I don't remember. He's either remembering seeing it with someone else, because he's old, or I was there and can't remember because I'm old.

Newsflash (or the flash of a connection).

Holly just came in and asked what I was up to. I said I was working on a blog post about mushrooms that look like penises.

"Really?"

"Yeah."

"Are you going to quote that Sublime song?" She spoke a line and said, "Oh, that's about penises shaped like mushrooms." She offered to sing it for me.

Well she told me to come over and I took that trip
And then she pulled out my mushroom tip
And when it came out it went drip, drip, drip
I didn't know she had a GI Joe kung-fu grip

"Is that too nasty for your blog?" she asked.

Some days maybe so. Today, no.