Pseudocolus fusiformis

Pseudocolus fusiformis
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Fungi
Division:	Basidiomycota
Class:	Agaricomycetes
Order:	Phallales
Family:	Phallaceae
Genus:	Pseudocolus
Species:	P. fusiformis
Binomial name
Pseudocolus fusiformis (E.Fisch.) Lloyd (1909)

Pseudocolus fusiformis
Mycological characteristics
	glebal hymenium
	no distinct cap
	hymenium attachment is irregular or not applicable
	lacks a stipe
	spore print is olive-brown
	ecology is saprotrophic
	edibility: inedible

Pseudocolus fusiformis is a stinkhorn mushroom in the Phallaceae, a family well known for a remarkable range of fruit body types. It is the most widely distributed member of the genus Pseudocolus and has been found in the United States, Australia, Japan, Java, and the Philippines. It is commonly known as the stinky squid, because of its fetid odor, and its three or four upright "arms" which are connected at the top. The malodorous smell comes from the dark greenish slimy gleba covering the inside faces of the arms, and attracts insects that help to disperse the spores.

The first appearance of this species in the literature was in 1890, under the name Colus fusiformis, when Eduard Fischer wrote a description based on a painting he found in the Paris Museum of Natural History. In his 1944 monograph on the Gasteromycetes of Australia and New Zealand, Gordon Herriot Cunningham considered this naming to be a nomen nudum—not published with an adequate description. However, it was valid under the rules of the International Code of Botanical Nomenclature. In 1899 Penzig described the species Colus javanicus based on a single specimen found on Java, and a year later Fischer amended the name of his original Colus fusiformis to Colus javanicus, as he was not satisfied with the quality of his original description. Despite his doubts on the validity of his description, his original naming is both legitimate and has priority over C. javanicus.

In 1907, Curtis Gates Lloyd described the new genus Pseudocolus, and reduced several species to synonyms of Pseudocolus fusiformis. The first North American description of this species (as Colus schellenbergiae) was in 1916 by David Ross Sumstine; Johnson later (1929) transferred this to Pseudocollus schellenbergiae. Although Cunningham (1931) revised the genus Anthurus to include members of Pseudocolus, Dring in 1973 considered the genera to be distinct. Up until the appearance of an extensive study published in 1980, 13 different binomials had been used in the literature to name the species.Index Fungorum lists the following synonyms of P. fusiformis:

...
Wikipedia