By The L.A. River

Went down to the river today to look at plants for a filmmaker/artist doing a piece on the origins of the plants that find there way into the river bed and found some interesting stuff. One of the more interesting sights were a group of egg-like mushrooms growing in a sandbar right there in the river. I took them back to the office and identified them as Phallus impudicus, the Stinkhorn mushroom. This mushroom usually grows on under-composted wood mulch but here it was growing on the roots of a recently killed Arundo donax plants. Here's a video of Phallus impudicus fruiting in time-lapse. ( Warning: Not for the Faint of Heart or Easily Disgusted ).   

I'll go over some of the other interesting stuff in my next post.