Featured Image Credit: Elizabeth Fernandez/Getty Stock Images / Janeycakes Photos/Getty Stock Images
Topics: Australia, Social Media, Weird
Britt Jones
Topics: Australia, Social Media, Weird
There’s nothing like the The Land Down Under and that’s not always a good thing.
Australia has had us side-eyeing it for years after information about just what roams in the country continues to come to light.
But this? It's a no from me.
Now, you’ll never get a chance to visit the Upside Down, however if you ever lay your eyes on this weird little plant, it’ll seem like you’re on the set of Stranger Things for sure.
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After a horrible smelling fungus kept cropping up in people’s gardens in Aus, people were left scratching their heads at what it could be.
It really does look like something out of a horror film, and it apparently smells like rotting flesh.
But seriously, what is it?
According to Professor Brett Summerell, the chief scientist at Sydney's Royal Botanical Gardens, it’s a variant of the stinkhorn.
Speaking to Yahoo News Australia, he explained what the two variants in people’s gardens are and why it smells of ‘decaying flesh’.
Prof. Summerell said: "The first one is an anemone stinkhorn [and] is found from southern Queensland to Tasmania, but since has been spread around Europe and north America.
"The other is anthurus archeri - the octopus stinkhorn. Both produce the brown stinky substance on the 'tentacles' to attract flies and other carrion attracting insects - hence the smell of decayed flesh.
"They are relatively common at this time of year, as the weather cools and [they] like woody mulch as a substrate for growth. Neither are harmful to people or pets and they decay away pretty quickly."
Tom May, Principal Research Scientist at Victoria's Royal Botanic Gardens, also shared his knowledge on its purpose in Aussie gardens.
He said: "The spore mass is attractive to flies, which feed on the spores, helping to disperse them. Often the sporing bodies are bizarrely shaped and colourful, presumably in imitation of rotting meat, which with the stinking odour, would be attractive to the flies.
"For humans, the smell means that it is unlikely that they would be consumed."
Now, this might be a new discovery for you and me, but it’s apparently something that keeps being rediscovered by online users ‘every six years’ according to social media commenters.
Underneath a video of the fungi, one person wrote: “I'm 20 and I've seen these several times through my life what do you mean they've just found it??”
Another added: “Why is it every six years we keep discovering this plant exists?”
But then people outside of Australia had to weigh in.
One commented: “AUSTRALIA!!! What in the Steven King hell is going on down there?!?”
While someone else joked: “Demogorgon, for sure.”
Let’s just hope it doesn’t start cropping up in other countries.