Phenology, morphological, and anatomical characteristics of a stinkhorn mushroom in Ghana

Abstract

The genus Phallus is a member of the group commonly known as stinkhorn fungi belonging to the family: Phallaceae and Order: Phallales. They are distributed in tropical areas of Africa, Asia, Australia, and the Americas but are rarely reported in Ghana. During the recent minor rainy season (September-December 2022) an undocumented member of the Phallales was found in a rock garden located in the Greater Accra Region, Ghana. The subterranean basidioma developed from an egg-like structure, single or gregarious with a thick gelatinous peridium. The primordium was oval/spherical, or ellipsoidal in shape; initially hypogeous becoming epigeous in the habit by maturity; is 4.0-5.0 cm in diameter, creamy to grayish cream with age. Within 48-72 h, the egg broke to expose the pink-colored stalk, sponge, or reticulate with rounded greyish-dark green cap carrying smooth-walled slimy ellipsoidal basidiospores (2 - 5μm) with a fetid rotten smell. Within 2 - 4 h of the emergence of cap, it was depleted of the ellipsoidal spores by foraging bluish-green bottle flies. The transverse section of the columnar stipe (5.0 - 8.0 cm long) showed a hollow orifice serving as the passage of basidiospores in the glebal mass. Occasionally, there was a division of the stipe at the cap to show two distinct stipes and caps from the same volva of the basidioma. The pileus was campanulate (bell-shaped), 2-3cm high dark green in color with vertical granular markings, and rounded to hemispheric in shape. Dark-green basidiospores besmear the cap with slimy glebal mass. These descriptions agree with no known penis-shaped morphology of the Phallus species with a prominent basal volva 2.0 - 3.5 cm high.