Originally published at: Dead man's fingers is the name of a morbid-looking fungus | Boing Boing
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The one on the page you link to makes it easy to see where the name comes from.
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Followed by the Bleeding Tooth fungus:
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No dead mans fingers in this video, but a wonderful study of fungi in the bay area by Chicago’s best botanist.
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We pretty regularly get dead man’s fingers in our backyard. My son had set up a small fairy garden and a few of the fingers grew up and over the fence.
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And for a great prank, find some growing in a public place, and give them press-on fake fingernails.
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@Popkin, If you like these dead man’s fingers, try to find a botanical garden growing Decaisnea fargesii. Giving their fruit a handshake was really something.
ETA: also, that botanical family name? During my studies, I used to recite it like a spell whenever I needed one.
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There is a willow grows askant the brook
That shows his hoar leaves in the glassy stream.
Therewith fantastic garlands did she make
Of crowflowers, nettles, daisies, and long purples,
That liberal shepherds give a grosser name,
But our cold maids do “dead men’s fingers” call
them.
— Hamlet, Act 4, Scene 7
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Those would not be a welcome look in a cemetery.
One of the coolest fungi I found i the wild was a stink horn fungus.
It looked like a carrot sticking out of the ground with poop on the end.
Evidently it smells, attracting flies to spread spores - but I didn’t get close enough to smell it.
The one I found looked like this.
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In the UK the roots of the highly poisonous Hemlock Water Dropwort is also called Dead Man’s Fingers. Nature likes to remind us that we are mortal and that if we ignore the fact she has ways of making it happen.
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When I was a kid one spring a bunch of specimens of a similar species came up in my neighborhood, but they were pink and, er, looked like something other than carrots. A neighbor lady said, “They’re popping up everywhere, but where’s one when you want one?” 
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