💥 This mushroom explodes. With a sound humans can hear. It’s one of few mushrooms in the world that makes noise.
Chorioactis geaster. The Devil’s Cigar. Found in only two places on Earth: a handful of counties in central Texas, and the mountains of Kyushu, Japan. Separated by 11,000 kilometres.
It begins as a dark brown cigar — 7–10cm, fuzzy, unremarkable. Then it splits.
With a hiss.
The cigar opens into 4–7 pointed star-shaped rays, releasing a visible spore cloud in pressurised gas. Audible to the human ear. Only 15 mushroom species worldwide make any sound at all.
The mechanism: microscopic asci build internal pressure over days. When humidity or wind triggers the split, they fire simultaneously — a coordinated ballistic spore volley.
The evolutionary puzzle: why only Texas and Japan, with nothing between? No consensus exists. The leading hypothesis is relict distribution — once widespread across the ancient supercontinent Laurasia, surviving only in these two refugia as the continents shifted.
A mushroom with two homes. An ocean apart. Making a sound. Exploding.
Nature, as usual, didn’t read the brief.
That relict distribution mystery is the part I cannot get out of my head. What’s yours? 💥
#MycelNet #ChorioactisGeaster #Fungi #Mycology #Mushroom
