A detailed discrimination of the Puff-balls is hardly necessary here, and I will therefore omit it. While I am not inclined to go so far as to contend, as was the quaint habit of old Dr. Culpeper, in his Herbal, in which he was wont similarly to elude description of an herb, affirming that "he were a fool indeed who does not know this plant"—or words of similar import—it is perfectly safe to say that if there is one fungus more than another with which the populace is specifically familiar it is the Puff-ball.
Spore-cloud dissemination
In these fungi, of which there are many species, the spores are incased within the white or dingy peridium or more or less globular case—gasteromyceteæ, from gaster, a stomach. The interior spore substance is at first white and firm in structure, at length peppered with gray, both conditions being indicated in accompanying cut, and ultimately black or brown, after which the outer case becomes dry and papery, and soon bursts at the summit, liberating its clouds of spores with the slightest zephyr, or, later, becoming dislodged from its slender anchorage to the soil, is whisked before the breeze enveloped in its spore-smoke. Fries, the eminent fungologist, has reckoned the number of these spores in a single Puff-ball at ten millions—presumably a conservative estimate.
But it will surprise most people to know that the plebeian Puff-ball of our pastures is good for something besides the kick of the small boy.
There are a number of species of the Puff-ball, and none of them is known to be poisonous.
Various species
I have indicated an arbitrary group in [Plate 34] ranging in shape and size from the small white globular variety of an inch in diameter, L. saccatum, and the pear-shaped L. gemmatum, to the giant pasture species, which may frequently attain the dimensions of a football or a bushel basket. In its larger dimensions it is more spreading in shape, being somewhat wider than high. All the Puff-balls are edible if gathered at the white stage—i.e., white pulp; those of yellow or darker fracture being excluded, as the fungus in this later stage is not considered fit for food.
PLATE XXXIII
A GROUP OF PUFF-BALLS