Fruit-body: width 20-50 mm; height 40-75 mm.
Description:
Fruit-body: more or less pear-shaped, pale brownish often with a slight hump on the top, scurfy on the outside with tiny pointed granules which soon fall off or become rubbed off by abrasion, particularly after careless handling.
Stem: consisting of rather small cells and connected at the base by long, white, branched cords of mycelium which permeate the substrate.
Spore-mass: white at first then greenish yellow and finally olive-brown and formed around a sterile column.
Spores: small, olive, minutely warted but appearing smooth under the student microscope; 4 µm in diameter and intermixed with long, olive coloured, branched hyphal threads 4-5 µm broad and of irregular wall thickness.
Habitat & Distribution: This puff-ball grows in huge clusters on stumps and logs, or can be traced to buried pieces of wood; it occurs from summer to late autumn.
General Information: There are several species of Lycoperdon in this country, some quite small and several rather infrequent. L. pyriforme is the only one which grows on wood; ‘pyriforme’ means pear-shaped and is derived from the shape of the fruit-body.
L. perlatum Persoon
is also a common puff-ball; it is pestle-shaped or top-shaped, whitish or tan with minutely roughened, globose spores measuring 4 µm in diameter. The fruit-body is covered in a mixture of large and small, fragile spines which leave a network when rubbed off. It grows in woods and on heaths.