10 Spookiest Types Of Fungus In The World
When it comes to nature, Fungi can reserve the top spot to be one of the creepiest living organisms. Usually, they are placed in a Kingdom of their own apart from plants and animals. Do you know that they help humans brew tasty beverages like beer, they recycle nutrients from dead plants and animals, and they provide nutrients for trees. Of course there are others that destroy food crops and kill any humans who accidentally ingest them.
Imagine you roaming in a dense forest and finding a trunk covered in eyeballs growing out of the ground, or a foul-smelling “octopus” that looks like it’s reaching for you with slime-covered tentacles. You never know what you’re going to see from any fungi species.
In celebration of their weird and lovely world, here are the 10 creepiest, spookiest types of fungus in the World that will blow your mind (some fungus literally mean it):
1) Dead Man’s Fingers
Scientific Name: Xylaria polymorpha
Most of the fungi live unseen beneath the soil for most of the year and will be able to see them when they poke up their spore-producing structures. Mushrooms are just the way that fungi spread their descendants. Not all fungi produce mushrooms, whatever.
They have branches of gnarled-looking black structures. The reason behind their common name is that they look as if they could well be the fingers of some dead man trying to scratch his way out of the earth. They usually grow from the bases of rotting or injured tree stumps and decaying wood which gives them spore-producing blackish/grayish surface.
This fungus is not considered edible due to its wood-like hard texture, so it's best for you to just wave to these fingers and pass on by.
2) Devil’s Tooth
Scientific Name: Hydnellum peckii
Also known as bleeding-tooth fungus, strawberries and cream, red-juice tooth. The bright red liquid oozing out of it isn’t blood—it emerges due to guttation. This is a process that causes rapidly growing or metabolizing plants to excrete excess fluids.
This inedible fungus lives with pine trees, attached to their roots, and helps them to gain nutrients from the soil. There exists a mutual relationship between many plants and fungi in which plants provide the fungi with sugars, and in return fungi offer them mineral & nutrients.
3) Common Stinkhorn
Scientific Name: Phallus impudicus
The literal meaning of its scientific name is “shameless penis”, LOL. One look at the structure which sprouts from an underground “egg” is enough to explain why it got that binomial. The common stinkhorn can grow up to 25 centimetres (10 in.) in a matter of hours- shameless indeed.
The stinkhorn name is perfectly fit for it. The “horn” does stink and they are known to be a noxious fungus. The tip of the fruiting body is covered with a sticky substance which may smell like feces or a dead and decaying animal.
This fungus is edible, but only in its egg stage after that, they get rupture.
4) Ink Cap
Scientific Name: Coprinopsis atramentaria
As you can see it is a dull-looking mushroom. It has a flat, creamy-brown cap which soon begins to darken. As the mushroom ages, it starts melting with black color pigment and begins to drip to the ground. This solvent gives the ink caps their name as they look like they are oozing ink.
It is also known as tippler’s bane. The mushroom has a mild flavor and produces a large quantity of liquid which sometimes is used in mushroom soup with parasol mushroom.
This fungus is completely edible only during its young stage, but danger awaits when you mix the mushroom with alcohol. It produces a chemical called coprine which can be deadlious, even if alcohol is drunk, days after the mushroom is eaten.
5) Octopus Stinkhorn
Scientific Name: Clathrus archeri
Also known as devil’s fingers, it certainly has a unique look of its own. Like other stinkhorn fungi, it hatches out of thin, leathery “eggs” to reveal bright-red tentacles covered in patches of greenish-black slime.
This fungi spend much of their time underground, eating bits of wood as per researchers. When it hatches, it sprouts 4-8 “fingers”, they start oozing slime that smells like rotting flesh- it attracts flies to carry its spores to new locations.
This fungus is edible but due to its rotting smell and foul taste, it isn't something that you would look for and serve for dinner, but they are considered as delicacies in some countries.(Australia & New Zealand)
6) Cedar Apple Rust
Scientific Name: Gymnosporangium juniperi-virginianae
This fungus has a complex life cycle, none of it particularly pretty. They are parasites in the fungal world which lives on apples and cedar trees, but it cannot survive entirely on either of them. On junipers trees, it grows into large orange balls that dangle from branches like fruit.
During rainy days, orange spikes emerge which look like weird tree octopi. These orange spikes even shrink and swell with rainfall. They also release spores which infects apple trees by growing little orange threads that cause a disfiguring tree disease. By time those threadlike fungi make spores that travel back to juniper trees, starting the cycle all over again.
7) Cordyceps
Also known as Caterpillar fungus, is highly prized in many alternative medicines because it grows only at very high altitudes in the Himalayas of Tibet and China which makes its harvesting more controversial. In China, they are used for making soups. Nothing so strange about that, mushroom soups are pretty famous around the world. The difference is that Cordyceps is a genus of parasitic fungi that grows on the larvae of insects.
A single spore of fungus landing on an insect can be enough to infect it. The fungus grows rapidly within the body, using the insect’s internal organs for food. When the insect is used up, the fungus must break free to release its spores. They replace its tissue and sprout long, slender stems that grow outside the host's body.
Do you know that some species of Cordyceps are particularly devious. Once they get inside the body of an ant, it starts secreting chemicals that drive the ant to climb high into trees and cling on with their mandibles. From this high position, the fungus is able to more effectively spread spores to infect other ants. That sounds Hell!
Another new, unidentified species of Cordyceps turns humans first into violent “infected” and then into blind “clickers”, complete with fruiting bodies sprouting from their faces. Like traditional zombie canon, a zombie bite is death. However, the inhalation of Cordyceps spores is the un-death sentence. So its better for you to maintain a safe distance from it.
8) Luminous Mushrooms
Scientific Name: Mycena chlorophos
Many fungi exhibit bioluminescence and produce light, but this particular species from Southeast Asia is the oldest known example. The main use of light is to lure insects in much the same way that stinkhorns use their odor, like bugs around a porch light, these insects hit the mushrooms and help to spread spores.
The eerie green glow of rotting wood (actually produced by the fungi consuming it) has been called fox fire and faerie fire. The light is caused by an enzyme called luciferase which produces a compound called hispidin, an antioxidant that undergoes a chemical reaction to create a glowing light. Now that we know how the fungi produce light, there are researchers from genetic engineering suggesting, it could be used to make trees that glow in the dark to light paths.
This fungus contains toxin illudin S which is poisonous to humans.
9) Brain Fungus
Scientific Name: Gyromitra esculenta
This fungus are widely distributed across Europe and North America. It normally fruits in sandy soils under coniferous trees in spring and early summer. They are the species of morel mushrooms which are highly prized by chefs and diners for their sublime taste.
All the gyromitra fungus are edible for humans when properly boiled but some can be highly dangerous when eaten raw, such fungi has a common name as “false morel”. They contain gyromitrin, a volatile water-soluble hydrazine compound that decomposes in the body into methyl hydrazine which can lead to Human death.
10) Dung Cannon
Scientific Name: Pilobolus crystallinus
Also known as "Hat Thrower", is a species of fungus belonging to the Mucorales order. It is unique in that it adheres its spores to vegetation, so as to be eaten by grazing animals. It then passes through the animals' digestive systems and grows in their feces.
Considering fungi are immobile, the superlative “fastest creature on Earth” might seem impossible. But when it comes to acceleration, the Dung Cannon is indeed the fastest organism: The fungus launches its crystalline spores which can accelerate 0-45 mph in the first millimetre of its flight, which corresponds to an acceleration rate of an incredible 20000 g, faster than guns and even rocket ships. Woah!!
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Shameless penis 😂😂😂😂(
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