All puffballs are okay to eat as long as they are white inside. I usually just toss them in with other mushrooms to fry. They have a mild, mealy taste that complements egg and fish dishes really well. There are lots of species of true puffballs in several genera of the family Lycoperdaceae (Lycoperdon, Bovista, Morganella, Calvatia, ...), some are tiny and some are football-sized, and their outer shell can be white, brown or yellow. Cutting each in half is a good idea.








If it's not white inside, it means either that it's overripe and turning into a mass of spores, or that it's not a puffball at all (earthballs, false truffles, deer truffles, immature stinkhorns and earth stars can all look superficially similar).
Some " false puffballs" at different stages of development:







Funny, I hadn't noticed the little orange thing in this stinkhorn picture before I posted it, and it's a Cordyceps fungus, with lots of ascribed medicinal properties. It's probably pretty common in some places where the insects it parasitizes on are plentiful, but very difficult to find...


earth stars (Geastrum)

Tatiana and T4E - Thanks for the education. Fantastic photos!

Tatiana, Gulo, T4E, a question.

From what I understand about shrooms is that they do not require full sunlight because photosynthesis does not take place. Maybe that isn't correct.

From what little I know of other plants that do photosynthesize, leaves on branches and branches on trunks exhibit some correlation with the Fibonacci sequence.

Looking at this photo I have to wonder if anything similar is found in the fungi world ??

Plants want to maximize their solar exposition among other things, and fungi have other motives.

I bet a mathematician could explain it better, because the geometry of the living world is ultimately all about math. I’ll just outline the factors defining fungal shapes. The design of fungal fruitbodies pursues one key purpose – to successfully produce and disperse as many spores as possible at the lowest cost.

Generally, in most fleshy fungi (as opposed to microscopic species), spores ripen in/on what’s called the fertile surface, or hymenium. In the conventionally shaped mushrooms/toadstools, the stem raises the hymenium above the ground for better spore dispersal (this is why oyster mushrooms and many conks and don’t have stems, because they have trees they grow on for that), and the cap protects the hymenium from the elements. However, you can only fit so many spore-producing cells (called basidia in the Basidiomycetes, and asci in Ascomycetes) on a unit of surface. Fungi “try” to maximize their fertile surface in relation to fruitbody volume. and there are several key ways to do that: folds, gills, spines, tubes, or maze-like structures. Morels have comb-like structures. Hedgehog mushrooms have spines. Boletes have tubes. Some tiny species have very little flesh volume and wide gills, for a favorable mass to surface ratio. Some polypores have maze-like structures. The cauliflower fungus (Sparassis crispa) has an intricate petal-shaped structure. Chanterelles have folds, and most toadstools have gills. Cup fungi and crust fungi have very thin fruitbodies, so the hymenium is almost half the total volume. Interestingly but predictably, the most efficient solutions can be seen in completely unrelated species, and are a good example of convergence.

Puffballs and other similarly shaped fungi, collectively called gasteroid fungi, are believed to be “designed” for arid environments.

In dry conditions, such maximized spore-bearing surface becomes a problem, because of evaporation. In puffballs, the spore-bearing structures are simplified into a nearly amorphous mass and covered by a protective skin, so that spores develop inside. Structurally this skin is similar to what many common mushrooms have in the button stage (the Fly Agaric warts are remnants of the same skin that protects it when it’s tiny). As puffballs grow, the outermost layer of this skin breaks into pieces, sometimes with beautiful geometrical shapes. It probably also serves a purpose, as insect or slug repellent, because these tiny spines crumble and fall off easily. In fact, fungi have to be inventive in their protection against insects, and since they cannot run, like animals, or develop hard bark and thorns, like plants, so their protection is either chemical or ingeniously mechanical (scales, warts, microscopic sharp cells, slime, etc.)

Other gasteroid fungi, including truffles, have their hymenium all folded inside, like a bed sheet in a bag. Since many of them cannot disperse spores by wind (puffballs and earth stars are an exception) they often rely on chemical signals to attract animals to spread them. Stinkhorns smell of rotten meat and lilies. True and false truffles smell like pig and squirrel sex, respectively. In fact, false truffles of the genus Rhizopogon have been used as bait for trapping red squirrels in Siberia.

Just a few examples of various hymenial surfaces, to illustrate….

and some more....

I know that some of the mushrooms I harvest don't require sunlight..... I have crawled way back into underground Sitka Spruce root cavity "caverns" where Golden Chanterelles are literally hanging from the "ceiling" and growing out of the "walls", places where you could pick several gallons, and barely need to move more than a few feet down the "tunnel". It is dark enough to require a headlamp back in these locations, so no direct sunlight ever get back in there...... and I usually emerge covered with mud, dirt, and covered with various Spruce Pitch smears on myself

Tatiana would be the one to direct any real mushroom questions to though, since I have no knowledge of them, and she is an ACTUAL expert in the field

I just enjoy harvesting the few I know

The abundance of varieties of mushrooms in my climate is staggering, once you actually start paying attention, and try to learn any!! Maybe some day Tatiana can create a more comprehensive field guide, for those of us interested in the world of fungi, and all their useful (or harmful) attributes !?

Holy cow ! Thank you so much for all that information to think about.

While reading I was immediately reminded of Bergmann's rule and Allen's rule relating surface area to volume and latitude. Is that a reasonable comparison to make between the fungi, as you describe it, and mammals ? It sounds as though the "motivations" may be similar even if the ecogeographical component is not...........and maybe it IS. Is there greater or lesser complexity in the folds etc as one changes latitude ?

I addition to the earlier photo of yours that I posted I was also thinking about the gills that are visible on the underside of some of those pictured above.....relative to the FIB series. I was also wondering if something similar could be seen........maybe microscopically........if a mushroom were to be sliced in cross section. Is there a distinct cell shape at that level or is it amorphous ?

Thanks again. I wish I could ask a better-worded question.

I remember clearly when the FIB series was first shown and explained to me. I was delighted and astounded.

I knew that math makes the whole universe, though mathematics is not my strong point.

I get the gist of it all , as an artist, studies in anatomy, biological observation , then putting it to paper. Music too. It permeates all life. The rhythm of it all , I get lost in enjoyment and focus .

I will always appreciate the one who introduced me to such beauty and wonder, even though my complete understanding , mathematically, is limited.

In real life, music and art, I get it 1,000 %. We need to live forever, to absorb all there is to enjoy.

Thank you all for the many lovely photos of such magnificent, albeit not well known of all the potential, in some cases, uses of shrooms.

Thanks you so much to all who shared this knowledge.

God bless the hunters and gatherers....and a special blessing for those very few special folks like Tatiana that know their stuff, AND, take the time to teach the rest of us.

One last small contribution:

One of the commercial mushrooms I harvest is the "Matsutake" mushroom, or pine mushroom. #1 grade is a button with a fully intact veil. That grade sometimes sells for $100's of dollars in Japan. I one time at the end of the season (October 30th) found two buttons and went to sell them at a buying station. The posted price on the tent was $300/lb, which I thought was someones idea of a good joke. Usual price was around $25-$30 a lb. Well, the price was accurate as there were no other matsutake harvesting taking place anywhere in the world at the moment, and prices were sky high. The two buttons I sold for $50 each.

This thread has some real nice pictures and scope.
All I got was an experience of meeting some "pickers" that had trained their German wirehairs to sniff out yellow pine mushrooms( Suillus americanus?). This was in the 1980's and they had developed some dog collars to beep when they stopped over a hot area. Now there are GPS collars to do the same and show on a screen. 3 times a week they would send there picking back to Germany on a direct flight for the restaurant trade. For 3 months a year that is all they did and it was good money as the flights back and forth were expensive.