Creepy Fungus Called The 'Dead Man’s Fingers' Is Kind Of Disturbing

Nature can be so creepy sometimes

Ayoub

• Published in Interesting
• July 11, 2020

There are a lot of groups on Facebook, some of them are completely useless but there are also a considerable amount of awesome groups that deserve a lot of attention and praise. One of those groups is Mushroomcore, its 30,000 members love sharing photos and stories of all kinds of interesting looking fungi. 

However, even the biggest fungi fans ended up getting surprised by this highly unusual fungus: "The Dead Man's Fingers" (Xylaria polymorpha).

North Carolina fungus fan Regan Daniels uploaded a few pictures to the group in June saying: "Saw this Dead Man’s Fingers (or toes in this case) fungus that I literally thought was a Halloween decoration!”. The fungus in the picture looked so much like a body part and some people even thought that it's fake, but it's definitely not!

“I found the mushroom in Western North Carolina in the United States at a park that I frequent,” she told Bored Panda “The walk is nice [and] it’s next to the French Broad River so there’s a lot of good scenery.”

Various other fungi types were surrounding the fungus Daniels discovered, it was growing from a stump so it's no wonder that it remained untouched. Spotting something like that in the wild is not something most people are used to.

Throughout the year, the Dead Man’s Fingers usually appears at the bottom part of beechwood stumps and on buried hardwoods occasionally. It normally appears in tufts of three to six ‘fingers’ that are usually bent and seem like black knuckles.

It's fairly common in Britain and Ireland, and can also be found throughout Europe and in various parts of North America. Generally, The Dead Man’s Fingers is not regarded as edible, but I don't think anyone would ever want that anywhere near their mouths.

The Devil’s Urn Mushrooms is also an equally creepy fungi

Here's how people reacred to the ‘Dead Man’s Fingers’ fungus:

Ayoub