A Man and His Giant Puffballs

Another giant fungus story, this time from Ohio, as a Grafton man says he'll eat the 10 lb., 43 inch diameter specimen of Calvatia gigantica a neighbor found in his yard.

See a fungus bigger than a person’s head!
Ben Norris
Grafton Chronicle-Telegram

...On Thursday, Van Amburgh’s close friend and neighbor, Henry Husk, discovered a 10-pound puffball mushroom growing in a shady patch of grass on Van Amburgh’s property.

“It’s just humongous,” Van Amburgh said. “I’m 70 years old, and I’ve never seen anything like this.”

...Van Amburgh took the enormous mushroom to The Ohio State University Extension Office on Friday to have the fungi weighed. The mushroom weighed 10 pounds with a diameter of 43 inches and length of 21 inches.

“We’ll cut it open to see if the inside is too brown,” Husk said. “If not, we’re going to eat it.”

...“I’ll never tell someone they can eat a mushroom.” Malimich said. “That is the job of a mycologist. Consequences of a mistake can be terrible and even kill you.”

Malinich warned of a mushroom called the “false puffball” that looks like a traditional puffball but will do a number on internal organs.

In the field of fungi, Van Amburgh’s mushroom is known as the calvatia gigantea [sic], Malinich said. The huge size of this mushroom is actually quite common, and giganteas have grown twice as big as Van Amburgh’s.

The Extension Office, however, hasn’t seen one that big before.

Typically puffballs grow to about the size of a baseball...

Typical puffballs are generally much smaller than baseballs; typical Calvatia gigantea are that large when mature, though. I'm not entirely sure what Malinich is calling a "false puffball." That might be a reference, though, to Scleroderma, a genus of puffball-like fungi that are, indeed, poisonous. There are several distinguishing characteristics that separate Scleroderma from less dangerous genera such as Calvatia and Lycoperdon. Scleroderma has a thick, sometimes even hardened, "skin" and lack a sterile base that, in the edible puffballs, contains no spores. You can see the difference by comparing the two images below:

	Lycoperdon pyriformes, a typical puffball. Note the "stem" extending below the spore chamber.
	Scleroderma citrina, on the other hand, is a typical member of its genus. While there is a small sterile base at the bottom of the spore chamber, it is rarely elongated to anything like the extent one sees in Lycoperdon et al.

Having said all that, if you're not sure of what you've got, as Malinich wisely advises, simply don't eat it. No puffball can poison you if you don't swallow some part of it first.

Sphere: Related Content