1. Calvatia—The large puffball.
  2. Lycoperdon—The small puffball.
  3. Bovista—The tumbling puffball.
  4. Geaster—Earth Star.
  5. Scleroderma—The hard puffball.

Calvatia. Fr.

This genus represents the largest sized puffballs. They have a thick cord-like mycelium rooting from the base. The peridium is very large, breaking away in fragments when ripe and exposing the gleba. The cortex is thin, adherent, often soft and smooth like kid leather, sometimes covered with minute squamules; the inner peridium is thin and fragile, at maturity cracking into areas. The capillitium is a net-work of fine threads through the tissues of spore-bearing portion; tissue, snow white at first, turning greenish-yellow, then brown; the mass of spores and the dense net-work of threads (capillitium) attached to the peridium and to the subgleba or sterile base which is cellulose; limited and concave above. Spores small, round, usually sessile.

Calvatia gigantea. Batsch.

The Giant Puffball. Edible.

Plate LVII. Figure 454.—Calvatia gigantea.

This species grows to an immense size (often twenty inches in diameter); round or obovoid, with a thick mycelial cord rooting it to the ground, sessile, cortex white and glossy, sometimes slightly roughened by minute floccose warts, becoming yellowish or brown. The inner peridium is thin and fragile, after maturity breaking up into fragments, apparently without any subgleba; capillitium and spores yellowish-green to dingy-olive. The spores are round, sometimes minutely warted.

Not common about Chillicothe, but in the northwestern part of the state they are very plentiful in their season, and very large. Standing in Mr. Joseph's wood-pasture, east of Bowling Green, I have counted fifteen giant puffballs whose diameters would average ten inches, and whose cortex was as white and glossy as a new kid glove. A friend of mine, living in Bowling Green, and driving home from Deshler, saw in a wood-pasture twenty-five of these giant puffballs. Being impressed with the sight and having some grain sacks in his wagon he filled them and brought them home. He at once telephoned for me to come to his house, as the mountain was too big to take to Mohammed. He was surprised to learn that he had found that proverbial calf which is all sweet-breads. That evening we supplied twenty-five families with slices of these puffballs.