Here are a bunch of giant puffballs for this #mushroommonday
The forest is full of Calvatia gigantea aka Giant Puffball mushroom.
Sadly the hobby around here for people is to stomp them like a soccer ball. Most specimens I found were shattered like this.
But I did find a few harvestable smaller fresh ones. The heat causes them to start to open like this.
This one looks like it got caught in a knife fight.
Others looked perfect on the outside sort of like a cratered planet.
You have to check and make sure the flesh is nice and white on the inside. If there is any sort of yellowing it is already too old. I like to cook these with something really tomatoey like a lasagne or a vegetable soup. Take care not to burn them though they taste awful if burnt.
This one looked good on the outside but it had already started to spore.
Here is a much older specimen slowly distributing its billions of spores.
I think this one must be at least two years old. It gave birth to a puffball patch. The old spores start looking like heating insulation.
Fall is slowly creeping in here and now I know to always look for puffballs when the pumpkin displays come out in full force.
That's all for now, thanks for looking :-)
A mum Christmas tree with pumpkins for presents 😂 thats quite a bunch of giant puffballs. I don't see them that much around here. Maybe just not looking hard enough because I have seen a few.
Keep an eye out for the smaller pear shaped puffball, they start later in fall and have a better taste compared to these foamy giant ones. Just look on dead fallen trees and along path edges (though those might have dog pee on them lol).
Thats a lovely find. ☘️ The size was of 15cm apparently?..
The big old brown one was 30 cm, the ones I like to harvest are more in the 15 cm and under size since they are more dense and less foamy.
Successfull #mushroommonday 👍
Next up is to harvest buckets of the pear shaped puffballs when they finally grow here after all the leaves have fallen.
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