After reading a recent post on Dinosaurs and Robots about the rare and exotic "Devil's Cigar" mushroom, I remembered the appearance of this, probably not rare or exotic, fungus growing in our own yard a little over two years ago.
I noticed it when I bent down to pick up what I thought was a river rock. Just before touching it I realized that it was plant rather than mineral. About two or three days later it exploded sending wispy smoke-like trails of spores out to colonize the neighborhood.
I took these pictures from a safe distance for fear that a face-sucking hatchling would send me into the history books as the first human casualty of an alien invasion. I was probably overreacting.
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that's a giant puffball and when young (before turning any shade of brown) they are delicious.
ReplyDeletecheck it out:
http://www.treknature.com/gallery/Europe/United_Kingdom/photo2027.htm
hubert.
i dont know about eating these things. haha. but we had afew of these things show up in our yard afew years ago. they seemed to sprout up over night or within afew days. someone told me not to mess with it because it was a fungus. i kicked one and dust went everywhere. i tried to pry another out of the ground using a pooper scooper. Well, it was so rooted into the ground that it broke the pooper scooper. Anyway good picture. Do you know any more about these things?
ReplyDeleteWow! broke your pooper scooper! See I knew these things could be dangerous.
ReplyDeleteActually huggybear is right- these are edible fungus. Not technically a mushroom but related. Here is our follow up post with a picture of giant puffballs being sold at a market.
http://www.ramshacklesolid.com/2008/08/when-in-doubt-eat-it.html
I am hoping our original invader set seed that will eventually spawn.