Nature Study: Fall Mushrooms

Every year we get a formation of mushrooms in our front yard. You can view past formations HERE
For the first time we have puffballs and they appeared on the opposite side of the yard. We've had a nearly full "fairy ring" in the past and a rectangle packed solid with saucer-shaped mushrooms. In Southern Indiana we once had a nice long study of a huge Scarlet Saucer mushroom. These puffballs are bigger than grapefruits!

They grow on the ground usually, some in wet, shady 
places, and others, as the giant species, in 
grassy fields in late summer. This giant 
puffball always excites interest when 
found. It is a smoothish, white, rounded 
mass, apparently resting on the grass as if 
thrown there; when lifted it is seen that it 
has a connection below at its center, 
through its mycelium threads, which 
form a network in the soil. It is often a 
foot in diameter, and specimens four feet 
through have been recorded. When its 
meat is solid and white to the very center, 
it makes very good food. The skin should 
be pared off, the meat sliced and sprin- 
kled with salt and pepper and fried in hot 
fat until browned. All the puffballs are 
edible, but uninformed persons might 
mistake the button stages of some of the 
poisonous mushrooms for little puffballs, 
and it is not well to encourage the use of 
small puffballs for the table. 

A common species " the beaker puff- 
ball " is pear-shaped, with its small end 
made fast to the ground, which is per- 
meated with its vegetative threads. 

The interior of a puffball, " the meat/* 
is made up of the threads and spores. As 
they ripen, the threads break up so that 
with the spores they make the " smoke/* 
as can be seen if the dust is examined 
through a microscope. The outer wall may 
become dry and brittle and break open to 
allow the spores to escape, or one or more 
openings may appear in it as spore doors. 
The spores of puffballs were used exten- 
sively in pioneer days to stop the bleed- 
ing of wounds and especially for nose- 
bleed. 

 In one genus of the puffball family, the 
outer coat splits off in points on maturing, 
like an orange peel cut lengthwise in six 
or seven sections but still remaining attached 

to the base. There is an inner coat 
that remains as a protection to the spores, 
so that these little balls are set each in a 
little star-shaped saucer. These star points 
straighten out flat or even curl under in 
dry weather, but when damp they lift up 
and again envelop the ball to a greater or 
less extent. 

All text quoted from Comstock's Handbook of Nature Study