Stinkhorns Again

The thing about mushrooms is that they can be pretty hard to identify. I posted recently about some stinkhorns I found in my backyard, and I identified them as Phallus impudicus, the common stinkhorn. Well, I looked them up in another really great mushroom book I have, "Mushrooms of Northeast North America" by George Barron, and I also checked out a voucher specimen at the Missouri Mycological Society's website. That voucher specimen is of Phallus ravenelii, or Ravenel's stinkhorn, and it looks an awful lot like the common stinkhorn. So now I'm wondering whether the ones I saw are P. ravenelii rather than P. impudicus.

The way to distinguish the two, according to Barron, is to look for the chambered ("morel-like") head after the spore-mass is removed from P. impudicus. Oops, too late for that! The picture of the voucher specimen (collected by Brad Bomanz) appears to show some of the spore-mass removed, but I have to say that the head of that specimen doesn't look particularly morel-like to me. For an example of a morel, check out the same collector's picture of Morchella deliciosa.

See? Told you mushrooms are fun!