Dusty puffballs

Puffballs are a group of spherical fungi that vary in size from small cherry tomatoes to beachballs. The largest of them – the giant puffball – is quite edible when immature but doesn’t taste of much. It is the mushroom’s answer to tofu and can be used as a “filler” in many dishes. Puffballs don’t have gills or tubes like most edible mushrooms. Their spores develop inside the fungus and when it dies and dries out, the top splits and sends out small clouds of spores with the slightest bump or gust of wind. Puffballs look a bit like small erupting volcanoes if you look at them closely. The scientific name for puffball – Lycoperdon – actually means ‘wolf fart’.

If you find an open, but not totally destroyed puffball, you should try and poke around in it a bit. There is a particular group of beetles that specialise in living on and in puffballs and they are worth taking a closer look at.