Veiled Lady Mushroom
As I came out of the forest onto the river bank, I smelled something dead. Curious, I followed the stink to where it seemed strongest, and looked around. Nothing there but a mushroom with a gorgeous lacy bib, but wow, was it ever a beauty! Forgetting whatever might be dead in the vicinity, I knelt down next to it to sketch – and nearly barfed from the stench. It was the mushroom stinking like something long dead. Flies and small wasps were crawling all over the cap licking up its gooey tan coating. EWW! But then my eyes overwhelmed my nose and my disgust faded as I realized I had found one of my bucket-list entries – a Veiled Lady Mushroom, also known as the Bridal Veil Stinkhorn.
Veiled lady mushrooms often reach nearly ten inches in height. You can look through the round hole in the cap’s top clear down through the hollow stalk to the ground. The lacy, netted veil or skirt, known as the indusium, may serve as a ladder to help insects crawl up to the cap. Here’s an amazing video showing the mushroom extruding the veil.
When it is fresh, the cap is covered with foul-smelling brownish-green slime (gleba) full of mushroom spores. The mushroom I painted had been serving as dinner for awhile, so the gleba had been almost entirely eaten away by insects. Wherever they would excrete after leaving the mushroom, new mushrooms would sprout.
Amazingly, in spite of its stink, this mushroom is considered to be edible. It can be bought in Chinese markets for use in stir-frys and chicken soup (although I’ve not seen it offered in Belize). It also has medicinal properties, having been used in Chinese medicine as far back as the 7th century AD. You can find out more about it here.
If you find a veiled lady mushroom, admire it quickly, because within hours or a day at most, it will droop, the veil will become tattered, gray and limp, and by the next day the entire mushroom will be well on its way to ruin. I’ve found this mushroom in three places in the Vaca Forest Reserve, all in disturbed soil. One was beside a dirt road. So keep your eyes open for this fascinating mushroom.