NETN Species Spotlight
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Region 1 National Park Service Inventory & Monitoring Division U.S. Department of the Interior ecies Puffballs SPotlight Agaricaceae family Who in their country-living youth, and perhaps well into aureus (the cause of staph infections), their later years (guilty), hasn’t delighted in stomping on a Salmonella typhimurium and E. coli at least patch of mature puffball mushrooms to be rewarded by the as effectively as modern antibiotics do. magical smoky clouds that erupt from the spongy spheres? There are accounts of Native American Puffballs cover a wide number of species throughout children joyfully stomping on mature puffballs, North America, and most come into maturity in late and pretending that the resulting “smoke” summer or fall. They range in size from about golf-ball to was an eruption from a miniature a beach-ball, the latter being a Giant puffball mushroom volcano. Some things truly never (Calvatia gigantean), which is a highly-prized find by wild do change. That “smoke” is food foragers. Most species like to grow in relatively open actually a cloud of practically areas such as fields, by roads and trails, and in grassy uncountable spores. Giant clearings in the forest. puffballs can produce a mind- Millions of spores Puffballs fall into the saprobic category of fungi - meaning boggling several trillion spores. erupt from each there are not parasitic on other species, but rather Luckily for all other inhabitants of the puff of a puffball. decompose dead organic matter, such as leaf-litter, in order planet, those spores are Goldilocksian to grow. in their germination needs. If conditions aren’t just right, Ethnomycological Investigator which is well over 99.99% of the time, they fail to produce And other jobs you didn’t know existed. One who studies another puffball. Perhaps a single spore out of those the historical uses and sociological impact of fungi is an trillions will become a mushroom. A good thing too, for ethnomycologist. Though likely not a top job-posting you’ll if just one Giant puffball had 100% germination success, find on LinkedIn, it has revealed some interesting findings followed by the same for its offspring - things would get about the uses of fungi over the millennia. Puffballs are awful crowded around here. The resulting mass of fungi well-known by all the Native American tribes of North would amount to 800 times the volume of Earth. America, though uses varied across them. Some wanted Once the interior fleshy white mass, called gleba, has nothing to do with them. Some used them as a styptic disintegrated into the powdery spores and the exterior (stops a wound from bleeding) by mixing the spores with turns into a brittle, yet flexible paper-thin skin, puffballs spiderwebs and bark and applying it to wounds. Cherokee are like a loaded spring waiting for a trigger. A direct hit Indians used it to help heal sores and burns (early settlers by a single raindrop will jettison spores out at break-neck in the blacksmith trade picked up this trick as well). Many velocity of about 100 cm/second, forming a centimeter tall tribes collected them for food. Some wore dried ones cloud just 100th of a second after impact that contains a around their necks to help ward-off ghosts and evil spirits. million spores or more. The Blackfoot Native American Indian tribe historically Several tipis in this turn-of-the-last century Blackfoot camp feature painted-on puffballs to help ensure a hearty fire will stretched across much of the mid-western prairies of the burn inside. U.S. There, puffballs often grow in rings (some people today call any ring of mushrooms a “fairy circle”). Their legend held that these puffballs were stars that had fell to the Earth during a supernatural event. They would use dried puffballs as a reliable tinder to get a fire going strong. To help ensure a hearty fire within a tipi, they would sometimes paint representations of puffballs on the exterior canvas. I’ll Try Not to Spore You with the Details. Using the spores for medicinal purposes has since been backed by science, which has found them to be antibacterial, antifungal and antimicrobial. They fight Staphylococcus EXPERIENCE YOUR AMERICA November 2020 Alan Wolf/Flickr Travis S./Flickr From left to right: Puffball species range in size from a beach-ball (giant puffball) to about golf-ball (common puffball). Smaller puffballs can share some characteristics of poisonous mushrooms in the Amanita family. Slicing into the “button” or “egg” reveals the gilled mushroom in miniature inside however (Amanita spp) as opposed to pure white flesh (common puffball) . A Wolf..., What Now? or angel of death in a mushroom book and think: “Hey, Sometimes, one can’t help but wonder about the folks who that sounds delicious!” When edible, sliced-open puffballs come up with the scientific names for life. Case in point, should contain only pure white flesh, often likened in about 50 puffball species hail from the Lycoperdon genus appearance to marshmallow or fresh mozzarella. The of life. Translated from the Greek, “Lyco” means wolf, and button or egg-stage of poisonous gilled mushrooms mimic “perdon” means “to break wind.” Yup. It’s the wolf fart puffballs until vertically sliced into revealing the future mushroom. The derivation of the ‘breaking wind’ part of stem and cap of the Amanita in cross-section. the name is obvious, but why that offense is laid on a wolf is Doesn’t Pass the Sniff Test. beyond the scope of mysteries this article can solve. “Lyco” Puffballs have never been responsible for a human death is somewhat unexpectedly found in the scientific names of as far as can be determined. Though on rare occasion, many common plants, including tomatoes and club moss, overzealous dogs inhaling copious amounts of spores have so there may in fact be little logic to it. died. Humans that have purposefully They’re a Sure Thing. Mostly. as beauteously, bulbously done the same almost suffered the Discovered early on, before they turn “Whuge—redundant as a same fate. In a logic that only teenagers brownish and belch out their spores, luminous moon—puffed and are capable of, eight Wisconsin teens in balled, seized by Uncle Richmond 1967 thought they could get a kind-of puffballs are edible. If you slice into from the deep woods, plucked the flesh and it’s still pure white, you with both hands and brought to magic mushroom high from snorting are good to add them to stir-fries the doorstep for our amazement puffball spores. Spoiler alert - they or other recipes. Depending on the and accolades, and to be sliced didn’t. What they did get was a month and fried, tasting like nothing but puffball species, flavors have been slightly singed butter...” in the hospital when the billions of described as relatively flavorless (kind spores in their lungs found the moist - Excerpted form The Puffball. of like tofu, they absorb the flavor By Fleda Brown conditions ideal to germinate. A series around them) to having a nutty, earthy of fungicidal treatments were able to flavor. Though you should never, ever save all their lives. This is an actual (really - don’t do it!) eat a mushroom you aren’t 1000% named respiratory condition called Lycoperdonosis, sure about, puffballs are placed by wild food harvesters which yes, translates to wolf fart disease. It may also among the vaunted “Foolproof Four”of edible fungi, as have something to do with another name of the common they are easy to identify (for the record, the other three are puffball: the devil’s snuff-box. Oh the stories they must tell morels, chicken of the woods, and chanterelles). There are their grandchildren: “Kids these days! When we were your exceptions however. Some particularly dangerous fungi age we snorting from the devil’s snuff-box and fighting can look somewhat similar to a puffball in the early growth- wolf-fart disease!” form known as the “button”or “egg” stage. Since they lack For more information a flashing neon sign above them saying “Eat This and You - Learn more about how to properly identify edible puffball Will Die”, mycologists have instead bestowed poisonous species. Amanita mushrooms with some of the most ominous - Watch this amazing time lapse video of puffballs growing sounding common names of any form of life. Hopefully no and maturing. one would ID a death cap, death angel, destroying angel, The I&M Networks of NPS Region 1: Eastern Rivers and Mountains Network, Mid-Atlantic Network, National Capital Region Network, Northeast Coastal and Barrier Network , and Northeast Temperate Network. Produced by: Ed Sharron. NETN Science Communication Specialist https://www.facebook.com/NPS.NETN/ Join the e-mail list to receive Species Spotlights https://www.nps.gov/subjects/science/index.htm.