A hollow lattice 5 to 20 cm tall of spongy coral red arms, thicker at the top, rising from a white egg; its olive gleba smells of carrion and draws flies.
- Size
- An egg up to 6 cm that opens into a lattice 5 to 20 cm tall, with 80 to 120 meshes.
- Edibility
- Not eaten: its smell of rotting meat keeps people away.
- Where it grows
- In leaf litter, lawns, gardens and mulched beds; native to southern and central Europe, and carried far beyond with garden mulch.
- Life span
- The cage stands for about a day before it collapses.
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- Family
- Phallaceae
- Order
- Phallales
- Ecology
- A decomposer of woody debris and litter. Flies drawn by the smell eat the olive slime on the arms and carry off its spores.
- Spores
- In the gleba, the dark olive slime on the inner faces of the arms.
- Chemistry
- Its red comes mainly from lycopene and β-carotene, the pigments of tomatoes and carrots.
- Described
- Pier Antonio Micheli gave it its name in 1729; Conrad Gesner had already drawn it in 1560, and it appears in Gerard's Herball of 1597.
Commonly associated with
- Folk names
- Red cage, latticed stinkhorn, basket stinkhorn; witch's heart in parts of France and Croatia.
In folklore
Its looks and smell earned it a bad name. In Gascony people believed it could cause cancer and buried any they found, and in several parts of Europe it was called the witch's heart.
Curious fact
The German Mycological Society named it mushroom of the year in 2011.
Folklore and traditional associations. They vary between sources and are beliefs, not scientific claims.