30 years of digging in my soil and I never saw anything like this before. I know it looks like a bulb, but it only has some kind of primordia on one end- a bulb would have roots on one side and at least some signs of the plant on the other side in Oct. They were very gooey and disgusting to touch and to the eyes when I found them. Also, a bulb of this size would have created a large plant and would likely have different sized bulbs but all the gooey balls were about the same size, close together and more numerous than what I have in the photo.
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I have encountered something like that before, here in CT, I think it is some kind of mushroom/fungus
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Maybe cut one open.
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That was also my guess. I won’t try eating them. One expects the fungus body to be above ground.
I sent the photo to my cooperative agent hort person. She’s very good at diagnostics so I might get an answer Monday if I don’t get it here.
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Very interesting find.
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There are several different possibilities here. There are some mushrooms that grow under soil surface - I wouldn’t say it is truffle, but could be a false truffle. Also some ferns has similar “bulbs” in the roots, google “sword fern root nodules”. Looking on the roots attached to them on your picture I am almost sure they are sword fern root nodules.
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I am pretty sure they aren’t any kind of fern nodules. I’ve manually removed all the fern types on my property and their nodules don’t look remotely like these.
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May be this?
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I believe it is, although it is usually found in pine forests and there are no native pines in my area, although I’ve planted quite a few on my property, just none near where I found these.
At any rate, it is a mycorrhizal fungus so I’m going to put them back into the ground.
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I may have used conifer mulch for my nursery trees. I think they were growing in the mulch, now that I’ve thought about it.
If they are gooey inside, they are something rotten; and it will be very difficult to figure out what they are. False truffles are firm inside when fresh.
They are firm, much firmer than a truffle.
If it’s firm on the inside but gooey on the outside, is it possible they are spring ephemeral bulbs but are rotting, and the identifiable bits just rotted away first?
These are stinkhorn eggs. They are the young, immature egg-stage of the Common Stinkhorn mushroom
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I have never heard of an egg stage for mushrooms, but looking that up, it certainly seems possible. However, some photos of yellow false truffle seem almost identical to the stinkhorn eggs. Both look like what I dug up. I would think if they were stinkhorns I would have noticed the stench when tending the nursery trees the eggs were growing by. I go through my every part of my 3 acres to every single tree about once every 2 weeks during the growing season.
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They don’t really stink. The "stinkhorn eggs " will go from hard to slimy then the stinkhorn mushroom will emerge from the “egg” .
Were they completely buried underground or just under the suface?
One way to know for sure is to keep an eye on them to see if a stinkhorn emerges
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I have found that before also and it startled me quite a bit. Enjoying this thread because I am learning what that encounter was.
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I certainly have plenty of those smelly things. Mostly around my owari satsuma and one other spot, so cool to learn what they grow out of. I hate them because the smell is so off putting
Really just under the surface, as much in mulch as soil.
I love this forum for the breadth of experience of members.
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If just under the suface they are stinkhorn eggs. Keep an eye on them to see when the stinkhorn mushroom emerges from the egg take a picture and i may be able to identify the specific stinkhorn species.
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