Common puffball

Description

The common puffball is a small puffball with a pear-shaped or club-shaped fruiting body 3–7 cm tall, covered with fine, warty spines that rub off easily and leave a net-like pattern on the skin. When young it is white, mature it browns and opens at the top, releasing a cloud of spores.

It grows from summer to autumn in forests, thickets, meadows and by roads, singly or in groups. In Poland it is very common.

Always cut the fruiting body lengthwise, because young amanitas in the "egg" stage may resemble it. A yellow or brown interior means an inedible fruiting body.

Identification features

Cap

A gasteroid species: no cap; fruiting body club-shaped or pear-shaped, with a rounded or humped top, height 3–10 cm, width 1.5–6 cm (descriptions give different ranges). Surface with warty, easily falling spines (granular-spiny, "pearly"), which when rubbed off leave net-like, roundish scars. White when young, mature ochre to brown and bald. The mature fruiting body opens at the top with a small pore (ostiole) through which the spores are released.

Hymenophore (underside of the cap)

No gills or tubes. The gleba (spore mass) occupies the upper part of the fruiting body: at first white and firm, then yellow, olive and grey-brown, finally powdery. The lower part is the subgleba, at first white, with time light brown.

Stem

No true stem; the fruiting body narrows towards the base into a broad, stem-like part (subgleba) with a columella.

Flesh

In young specimens the gleba is white, uniform and firm; with maturation it yellows and turns into an olive-brown powder. Taste and smell mild, hardly aromatic. Do not taste the flesh of unidentified mushrooms.

Spore print and spores

Spore mass olive. Spores globose, colourless or pale yellow, faintly warted (spiny), 3–4.5 µm (descriptions give slightly different ranges).

Habitat and distribution

Ecology. Terrestrial saprotroph, growing in forests, thickets, meadows, lawns and by roads; sometimes on rotten stumps. Singly, scattered or in groups, also in fairy rings. Accumulates heavy metals and selenium from the soil (bioindicator).

Distribution. A cosmopolitan species, described from almost all continents, from subarctic Greenland to subalpine Iceland. In Poland very common. Not legally protected.

Fruiting. From summer to autumn.

What can it be confused with?

• Lycoperdon nigrescens (Polish: purchawka czarniawa) — Spines dark from the start.
• Lycoperdon excipuliforme (the pestle puffball; Polish: purchawka fiolowata) — Larger and greyer, spines stellate; the upper part of the mature fruiting body disintegrates completely.
• Lycoperdon pyriforme — No distinct spines; grows on wood.
• Lycoperdon umbrinum — Spines do not leave scars when rubbed off, mature gleba dark brown to purple-brown, base with a violet tinge.
• Young fruiting bodies of amanitas (Amanita), in the "egg" stage — Deadly poisonous. When cut lengthwise the outlines of a cap and stem are visible (in a puffball a uniform white interior); amanitas usually have no "pearls" or rough surface.
• Scleroderma spp. (earthballs) — Detailed differences — no data; earthballs have a dark interior already in young specimens.

Never rely on a single feature. If you are not sure — do not pick it; show the mushroom to a qualified mushroom expert.

Interesting facts

• When mature, a single puff of wind or a raindrop about 1 mm in diameter can release as many as a million spores.
• English names include "gem-studded puffball" and "devil's snuff-box"; it was formerly believed that the spores cause blindness, hence "blindman's bellows".
• It is the type species of the genus Lycoperdon, and the image of the puffball has appeared on stamps of Guinea, Paraguay, Romania, Sierra Leone and Sweden, among others.
• As a bioindicator it is used to study soil pollution by heavy metals and selenium.