Not a puffball

It looked, at first glance, like a puffball, a small, round white golf-ball in the moss.

Look again.

Amanita sp.

It's one of the poisonous Amanita species, still just a button. Distinguishing marks: our local puffballs are smooth or covered with tiny spikes or knobs. This one wears irregularly-shaped patches.

Give it a few days, and it will take on the "umbrella" mushroom shape. A puffball stays round and will turn brown and develop a hole for the release of its brown cloud of spores.

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Parecía uno de los hongos muy comestibles, los hongos polveras. Una bola blanca y redonda, del tamaño de una pelota de golf, descansando sobre el musgo.

Hay que mirarlo más de cerca.

Es uno de los hongos tóxico del género Amanita, todavía en botón. Como se distinguen: los hongos polvera locales tienen la capa lisa, o cubierta de espinas o nudos miniaturos, muy regulares. Este lleva parches de forma variable, los restos del velo.

Después de unos pocos dias, tendrá la forma típica de paraguas. Un hongo polvera se mantiene redondito, pero se vuelve color café y está lleno de un polvo marrón, las esporas, que suelta al aire con cualquier impacto.

Gem-studded

 Last November, I came across a few clumps of stalked puffballs on Baikie Island. I had never seen ones like these before; all the puffballs I had seen were round balls, apparently stemless. These had definite stalks, longer than the cap.

I walked down the same trail last week. The puffballs are back. Not a few clumps this time; great masses of them, all along the trail, mostly in deep shade.

Lycoperdon perlatum, the gem-studded puffball.

Mature puffballs, full of ripe spores, ready to puff.

Last year I wasn't sure of the species, having found them too late to see their original shape. I was three weeks earlier this year.

I found this on MushroomExpert.com: 

Probably the most commonly seen woodland puffball in North America, Lycoperdon perlatum is widely distributed and fairly easily recognized. I say that, and yet I have consistently misidentified it for years, assigning the name to virtually any pear-shaped, golf-ball-sized, terrestrial puffball with spines.

What I was not paying enough attention to was the spines themselves. In Lycoperdon perlatum the spines are firm and cone-shaped, with relatively wide bases; they are often surrounded by shorter spines and/or granules, their tips often turn brownish—and, when they fall away, they leave a clearly defined, pock-mark scar where the base of the spine was attached.

And there it is: the brownish tips of the spines in the fresh puffballs, the pock-mark scar on the older ones. And the "pear-shaped or top-shaped whitish fruitbody" turning brown or olive coloured at the base. (This from E-Flora.)

The "golf-ball" puffballs are edible and delicious while the flesh is still white. I like to fry them gently with butter. These are still edible, with caution, as long as they are completely white, but E-Flora says they're "bland at best and bitter at worst". And they are too easily confused with young specimens of the extremely poisonous Amanitas. I'm glad I didn't try to harvest any.

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El año pasado, a mediados de noviembre, encontré unos grupos de hongos "puffball" (bolita de polvo soplado) con tallo. Nunca había visto puffballs como estos; todos los que antes conocía eran redondos, como una pelotita, sin tallo. Estos tenían tallos bien formados, más grandes que la pelota por encima.

Pasé por el mismo sendero la semana pasada. Están de vuelta los honguitos. Y no solo unos grupos esta vez, sino grandes multitudes de hongos, a todo lo largo del camino, casi siempre en sombra.

Son los hongos, Lycoperdon perlatum, el "puffball" adornado con joyas, lo llaman. La primera foto es de un grupo de hongos frescos, todavía blancos por dentro. La segunda muestra un grupo de hongos ya maduros, con las esporas cafés, y un poro por encima, por donde saldrán las esporas al aire con cualquier movimiento, o empujado con gotas de lluvia.

El año pasado, no podría estar segura de la especie de estos hongos, ya que cuando los encontré ya estaban todos bien maduros. Esta vez, llegué con tres semanas de adelanto, y los pude ver mejor.

Encontré esta descripción en MushroomExpert.com:

Este es probablemente el hongo de los bosques más comunmente visto en norteamérica. Lycoperdon perlatum está distribuido ampliamente, y se puede identificar facilmente. Esto lo digo, pero a pesar de esto, lo he malidentificado por muchos años, dando su nombre a casi cualquier hongo puffball en forma de pera del tamaño de una pelota de golf que tuviera espinas y creciera en la tierra.

Lo que no había notado era la forma de las espinas. En Lycoperdon perlatum, las espina son firmes, en forma de cono, con las bases amplias, están muchas veces rodeadas de espinas más cortas o de granitos; sus puntas se vuelven cafés – y cuando se caen, dejan una cicatriz bien marcada en la base.

Y ahí está: las espinas con puntas color de café, las cicatrices en los hongos ya maduros.  Y el "cuerpo blanco en forma de pera o de trompo" que se vuelve color chocolate o verde oliva en la base del tallo. (Esto viene de E-Flora.)

Los puffball en forma de pelota de golf son comestibles y deliciosos mientras que su cuerpo esté completamente blanco; a mí me gustan fritos con mantequilla. Estos aquí sí se pueden comer, con cuidado, mientras estén blancos, pero según E-Flora son apenas insípidos o hasta amargos. Y se pueden confundir facilmente con ejemplares jóvenes de las Amanitas que son extremadamente venenosas. Estoy contenta de no haberlos traído a casa para la cena.

Button, button

There's a patch of grass and clover between the parking lot and the highway at Oyster Bay. Not a lawn, not a meadow; just an open area with a picnic bench or two under cottonwoods. I've never seen anyone crossing it, except for me and my family. Cutting across it the other day, I saw many large Amanita mushrooms, all stomped and kicked to bits. Who does this? What harm would they have done, left in place?

A couple of buttons had sprung up since the vandals left:

Amanita muscaria, the fly agaric. About 2 inches across.

Another. On the stick at the left are a bunch of tiny mushrooms, looking like shelf polypores.

There were a few big puffballs, too. Nobody had touched these.

Mature puffball, with open pore ready to release its spores. Not edible at this stage.

Several puffballs, Lycoperdon perlatum, here. Not ripe, edible and choice as long as it's completely white inside.

I poked at the brown puffball with a finger, gently; it released a puff of brown spores. But after the mistreatment of the Amanitas, I didn't want to disturb anything, so I left it to wait for a good rain.

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En el parque en Oyster Bay, hay un triángulo de pasto y tréboles entre el estacionamiento y la carretera. No exactamente un césped, ni tampoco tierra abandonada; hay un par de mesas para picnic y un tablero informativo, todo bajo álamos altos. Nunca he visto a nadie en este lugar, a no ser yo y mi familia, cuando les llevé a mirar el tablero.

Cruzándolo el otro día, encontré un gran número de hongos Amanita, todos pateados, machucados, hecho pedazos. ¿Quién hará tal cosa? ¡No le hacían daño a nadie!

Había dos botones, salidos después de que se fueron los vándalos. Eran de unas dos pulgadas de diámetro.

También encontré algunos hongos "puffball", que emiten nubes de esporas cuando están maduros. La primera foto muestra uno ya listo. A un toque suave de mi dedo, le salió un soplo de polvo café.

En la última foto, hay tres, dos todavía escondidos bajo tierra y hojas caídas. Así, blancos completamente por dentro, se pueden comer, y son deliciosos, fritos con mantequilla.

Los dejé en paz. Un episodio de vandalismo es más que suficiente.

A pair of lifers. Mushroom lifers.

I've never seen mushrooms like these before. Puffballs, I see often, in parks, in the woods, in lawns; they're easy to identify, new or old or long gone. At first glance, I thought the first batch of these were old, burst puffballs. But different, somehow.

They have an open pore at the top; our usual puffballs break all at once, usually along the sides.

There were hundreds of these along the shore trail, all about at this stage.

They acted like regular puffballs; when I stepped on them, they released clouds of brown spore dust.

Huddled together in the grass, under dead leaves.

Farther along the trail, I came across more apparent puffballs, but without the top central pores. And when I looked more closely, I realized that they have strong, thick stalks.

The stalks were mostly hidden under the leaves and the soil.

But a few had been exposed, by wind, probably. Not by me.

Cracked and somewhat shrunken cap. And yes, they released spore dust, too.

And these caps have collapsed in on themselves, leaving mainly stalks.

My guide (Audubon) has one photo of a mushroom that looks like the first batch, with the pores at the top: the Buried-stalk Puffball, Tulostoma simulans.

The guide describes them like this: Spore sac: ... roundish to acorn-shaped, with small, tubelike mouth projecting at top; sand-covered, dark reddish-brown. (Their photo shows pale beige mushrooms, no reddish-brown anywhere.) ... Stalk, ... thick, scaly, fibrous rust-brown, often entirely buried.

I didn't know about this, so I didn't see the stalks. I will have to go back tomorrow to dig some up.

The second batch of mushrooms were larger; compare them to the leaves in the photos. I haven't found photos of these anywhere. I'll send photos in to INaturalist and some mushroom identification sites, to see if anyone can id them.

Late early mushrooms

I've been looking for mushrooms since the rains started, but with little luck. So I looked at the last two years' posts; in 2016, I was finding many mushrooms around here since the last week of September, earlier on visits north and west. But in 2017, they started to show up near the end of October, and in greatly reduced numbers.

This year, it looks like we're following last year's schedule. I found a very few last week; half a dozen puffballs in a patch that is usually thick with them, three small brownish ones on Tyee Spit.

And finally, this Wednesday, a short walk near Woodhus Creek turned up a crop of varied 'shrooms.

Down in the moss, a brown mushroom with purplish stripes. With an unidentified critter poking his head out from behind.

One puffball, already gone to spores. There were two others in the vicinity.

Mushrooms often grow in the shadiest, dimmest parts of the woods, and even there, they hide under logs or in the shelter of deep moss. The camera doesn't like this; there's not enough light to get a clean photo. But you can't use flash; most of the light-coloured mushrooms concentrate and reflect all the light, so that everything but the mushroom comes out nicely, but the mushrooms are a featureless glare. Puffballs are the worst. I was lucky to find one in a ray of filtered sunlight.

Tiny, delicate, pinkish mushrooms on a log. With a young sowbug. There were many of these.

A foot-long piece of burnt branch with a topping of moss, nurtured these tiny tongues, most under 1/2 cm. long.

Getting down close. The bases are a greyish blue, the tops pure white.

No mushrooms here. Leaf lichen with fruiting bodies on a dead twig, and Oregon grape leaves.

I met another mushroom hunter along this trail. He was looking for chanterelles, that he has found in large quantities here in previous years. Not this year; he hadn't seen one.

Soggy

I can't resist stepping on ripe puffballs. Doing my part to help with spore dispersal, I say, to excuse my childishness. But this week in the Tyee Spit puffball patch, the puffballs wouldn't puff; they squished and oozed instead.

Cave full of powder, too damp to fly.

Call them oozeballs this year.

The puffball has a unique spore dispersal strategy.  Within the spongy interior, the spores are produced by the trillions.  Eventually, the puffball dries and hardens to the point where it is a papery sac filled with trillions of spores.  When an animal comes along and steps on or bites into the puffball the spores are ejected forcibly.  For small puffballs this can even be accomplished by the impact of falling raindrops. (Field notes)

Anything that grows in the Pacific Northwest has to be able to cope with rain, and puffballs can use it even to get their flying spores airborne. Here's a gif of raindrops causing puffballs to puff.

Once spores are caught by the wind they can be carried very long distances. Spores of a wheat rust have been reported to have been dispersed 1,243 miles (2000 km) by the wind. (Fun Facts about Fungi)

But there can be too much of a good thing. This year's spores aren't going to go far from home.