Follow your nose? It was certainly worth a try. I had been searching the grassy slope for a couple of hours, without luck. Having failed to spot any blood-red amid the green, I hoped a smell might draw me closer. But all I could make out was the aroma of cattle grazing nearby in this still, quiet Dartmoor valley.
Two days earlier, a walker had made a rare find while on a navigation course in this area of Merrivale. They had stumbled across a lone devil’s fingers fungus, rising from the earth like a hand emerging from a grave, clawing at the air. An early Halloween treat.
Never having seen one before, I decided to track it down. However, its exact whereabouts was unclear from the photo in the news report: clumps of gorse in the background looked like every other in this rocky expanse.
Eventually I rang the hiker’s navigation tutor, Martin Williams. He recalled its location and within the hour sent me a map with the precise patch of turf pinpointed – it was, of course, a few metres from where I stood.
Reaching up from the dense sward was the otherworldly fungus, slightly desiccated but still intact, its spindly fingers twisted into a fist and blackened like chargrilled red pepper. At the base was the pale gelatinous shell from which it had hatched, affectionately known as a witch’s egg.
Native to Australia and New Zealand, this alien hitchhiker is believed to have arrived in England with war supplies, such as wool, in 1914. It is also named the octopus stinkhorn, the tentacles giving off a smell akin to rotting flesh, attracting flies that spread the fungal spores. Kneeling beside it, I could detect the putrid perfume of decay – though I did not lean in too close, lest this lifeform suddenly grasp at my arm.
We have a number of species with devil in the name, from the devil’s-bit scabious flower and devil’s matchstick lichen to the nickname for screaming swifts, devil birds. None earn that moniker more than this fungus, the gruesome devil’s fingers, playing dead amid the grasses.
• Under the Changing Skies: The Best of the Guardian’s Country Diary, 2018-2024 is published by Guardian Faber; order at guardianbookshop.com and get a 15% discount
