This strange looking fungi had me fooled when I first came across it. I had returned to a familiar spot where I had found some black trumpets a week prior. There we no trumpets to be found, but I did come across this strange long and slender stem with a tiny deformed looking cap at the top. I at first thought that maybe it was some other type of mushroom that had been parasitized and therefore was looking rather deformed. However, what a later learned, was that this fruiting body WAS the parasite. The mushroom that was being parasitized is the Elaphomyces fungus (aka. Deer Truffles, or False Truffles). Had I known, I would have dug it up and taken pictures of that as well. It has a brown to black cap with the outer surface covered in dimples or bumps. That same outer surface is also covered with ascii which release the fungus’s spores. The stem is tall and narrow. When young it is yellow from top to bottom. But with age it darkens, however it will remain yellow near the base.
