I lived in the city for the first 13 years of my life and now in the country for about that long and I've never seen anything like what I found in my flowerbed this past week. As I was walking up the front steps by the evergreen bushes, I caught a glimpse of something odd in the mulch. It initially looked like a few cooked carrots lying there, but a closer examination elicited an "Ew, gross!" Flies and other insects were having a good time chowing down on the tangled mass of orangey-brown stuff. A day or two later, a new crop was in the grass (picture below), and I was by now convinced it was a fungus of some sort. 

A Google search of "orange tube fungus" proved that to be the case. Usually found in decaying matter like mulch, Mutinus elegans (common names are "devil's dipstick" or "dog stinkhorn") has some unique characteristics. Rather than the classic mushroom/toadstool shape and color, this fungus is bright orange and has a tube-like shape that is covered with a dark, slimy substance containing spores. The fungus emits an unpleasant odor that attracts insects to feed on it, which aid in spore dispersal and therefore more of these unsightly things. Ugh!

References:

1. Mutinus elegans
2. Encyclopedia of Life

Written by TPS Fellow, Irene Gentzel