Imagine walking in the woods when suddenly you spot what looks like a hand clawing out of the earth.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cOh god. That\u2019s a body.\u201d But it\u2019s not. You\u2019ve just stumbled upon Xylaria polymorpha<\/em> \u2014 more famously known as Dead Man\u2019s Fingers<\/strong>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n This eerie fungus looks like \u201creal fingers, gnarled and black,\u201d emerging from the ground, especially around rotting hardwood stumps.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Despite their nightmarish appearance, these are harmless fungi.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cThey grow in dead hardwoods, generally stumps or roots, then sit there doing their thing.\u201d Dead Man\u2019s Fingers are saprophytes<\/strong>, meaning they feed on dead material and help recycle it \u2014 not on living trees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Young fungi are soft and pale, but as they age, they darken and harden, often looking like charred fingers, sometimes with lighter tips that resemble fingernails.<\/p>\n\n\n\n You can safely touch them \u2014 \u201cthey will not give you a rash or ooze anything\u201d \u2014 but wash your hands afterward, especially during spore season. As for eating them? \u201cOh heck no.\u201d They\u2019re not poisonous, just extremely tough and bitter.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" A Frightening Find in the Forest Imagine walking in the woods when suddenly you spot what looks like a hand clawing out of the earth. \u201cOh god. That\u2019s a body.\u201d But it\u2019s not. You\u2019ve just stumbled upon Xylaria polymorpha \u2014 more famously known as Dead Man\u2019s Fingers. This eerie fungus looks like \u201creal fingers, gnarled and black,\u201d emerging…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":3793,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_kad_post_transparent":"","_kad_post_title":"","_kad_post_layout":"","_kad_post_sidebar_id":"","_kad_post_content_style":"","_kad_post_vertical_padding":"","_kad_post_feature":"","_kad_post_feature_position":"","_kad_post_header":false,"_kad_post_footer":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3792","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3792"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":3794,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3792\/revisions\/3794"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/3793"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3792"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3792"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/horizonvibe.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3792"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}What Are They Really?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n
Touch or Taste?<\/h3>\n\n\n\n