Puffball

Puffball (Lycoperdon), a Linnean genus of Fungi, now divided into many genera, belonging to the section Gasteromycetes. They mostly grow on the ground, and are roundish, generally without a stem, at first firm and fleshy, but afterwards powdery within; the powder consisting of the spores, among which are many fine filaments, loosely filling the interior of the peridium, or external membrane. The peridium finally bursts at the top, to allow the escape of the spores, which issue from it as very fine dust. Some of the species are common everywhere. Most of them affect rather dry soils, and some are found only in heaths and sandy soils. The most common British species is L. gemmatum, generally from one to two and a half inches in diameter, with a warty and mealy surface. The largest British species, the Giant Puffball (L. giganteum), is often many feet in circumference, and filled with a loathsome pulpy mass when young; but in its mature state its contents are so dry and spongy that they have often been used for stanching wounds. Their fumes, when burned, have not only the power of stupefying bees, for which they are sometimes used, in order to the removal of the honey, but have been used as an anaesthetic instead of chloroform. The same properties belong also to other species. Some of them, in a young state, are used in some countries as food, and none of them is known to be poisonous.