A RARE fungus that grows in a gelatinous egg-like ball and smells like rotting flesh has been spotted in the New Forest.
The devil's finger fungus found in Lyndhurst has five tentacle-like growths and erupted from a gloopy structure that experts refer to as an egg.
It was photographed by Daily Echo Camera Club member Annette Gregory on Friday.
Annette said: "It really looks like an alien about to hatch."
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The New Forest National Park Authority said the fungus was first discovered in the Forest in 2000 and has since spread throughout.
It's thought it was introduced to Europe from the southern hemisphere in 1914 along with war supplies or wool.
This could be the reason the fungus is seen in areas in the Forest used by the military in 1942, the park authority says.
The authority's website adds: "The ‘egg’ part of the fungi has the size and shape of a golf ball lying on the ground, but is attached to an underground network of threads (or mycelium) by a long thick strand.
"It is gelatinous in texture, with a pink tinge from the tentacles or arms submerged inside, and surprising can remain in that state for several weeks, whilst waiting for conditions to be favourable enough to grow.
"The red tentacles eventually emerge, initially joined at the tip before arching backwards into a star shape.
"There are always at least three or four tentacles, sometimes even seven or eight, with the upper surface pitted with reticulations, and covered with an evil-smelling, olive-coloured, slime (or gleba) which contains the spores.
"The entire structure is about 5cm high with tentacles of about 7cm long.
"Flies, beetles and slugs are attracted to the smell of rotting flesh, and the slime sticks to them when they come into contact with it, and so the spores are dispersed far and wide.
"It has obviously proved to be an excellent way of spore dispersal, to have allowed colonisation of the entire New Forest in under 20 years, and now even some other places in the South of England. This is a unique and unusual way of spore dispersal for a fungus."
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