If someone has seen a plant like this, I'd like to know...

[beached_as]

Ok, i was digging around in a friend's garden helping her do so weeding when with my shovel i hit this really strange plant (unfortunately cutting it in half). I bagged it, put it on ice and then proceeded to wonder what the hell it was!

 

It was purple and porous, kind of like a sponge to the touch. Smelt like... shit, to put it bluntly and these little red things that look like dendrites (like basic diagrams at least) that protrude from the outer rim of the top of the bulbous, tubular structures which make up the bulk of the plant.

 

Inside the tubes are slimy with black (what i think are superficial), verticle stripes.

 

The root system is pretty contained as they do not venture far horizontally from the base of the plant.

[ecoli]

how do you know it's a plant?

[beached_as]

To ecoli

 

Because it has a root system. Though I'm not 100% on the whole plant thing. I'd love to have found some weird porous animal. What do you recon?

[ecoli]

could be an alien species

 

perhaps a weird fungus though.

[beached_as]

That was one of my immediate impressions. I have an aunt who works for the csiro and she's stumped as to what it is. Might give it to someone who knows their shit. The tissue on the inside of the tubes resemble the flesh of like a squid but I doubt the hybrid amphibious plant theory will hold much water! Haha.

 

Part of me does hope it's an alien species. That would be great!

[ydoaPs]

My immediate thought was some sort of fungi.

[Mokele]

I suspect it's a fungus, but it may be a non-photosynthetic plant (they're mutualists with fungus).

 

It may help to know where in the world this is? Suburban New Jersey, or Thailand?

[beached_as]

To Mokele

 

Haha, sorry, no New Jersey or Thailand. Australia, surrounded by overgrown grass, next to my friends swimming pool.

[BIOphile]

Well, the first step we need to take is to find out if it's a fungus or plant. Then we can move towards smaller and smaller classifications.

Are there any signs of any spore-bearing surface?

Are you sure the "root" is a root, or is it mycelia? If it IS a plant, it's vascular seeing as it has a true root. Look for vascular tissue (xylem and phloem, wikipedia has decent articles on each of these.) If it doesn't have vascular tissue, it's either a non-vascular plant or a fungus. If it is non-vascular, it won't grow too tall, because of its lack of vascular tissue.

As Mokele suggested, it could be a non-photosynthetic plant. Those have a parasitic relationship with fungi. I don't know too much about those.

Ehhh, I hope I helped somehow. Get back to me if you find out anything new about this organism!