Good evening, friends,
Oh boy has it been dry and dusty. Fresh mushrooms are few and far between, but you can still find dried up polypores on dead wood and a few lingering cap and stems mushrooms. That’s what we focused on during the mushroom walks this past weekend, and although the weather’s not great for mushrooms it is stellar for humans. There was, however, one fresh cluster of mushrooms I found on the preserve this past Tuesday, a species of Pholiota.
Instead of deciphering the spore size to try and identify whether it’s Pholiota aurivella or Pholiota limonella, I want to focus on a puffball I found in Cape Cod and continue with the puffball theme from two weeks ago. The purple-spored puffball, (Calvatia cyathiformis), was growing in sandy grass not fifty yards from the ocean. I thought it was the giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea) when I first found it, but it’s a totally different species that we have the privilege of learning about today.
Fun Facts
The mushroom is edible when young and the interior flesh is white and firm. the etymology for Calvatia comes from the latin calvus which means “bald” and calvaria which means “top of skull” - the latter a seasonally appropriate description for this mushroom. The species epithet cyathiformis means “flask shaped” which is more of a stretch, but I can see it.
In traditional Nigerian medicine this mushroom has been used to treat infertility and other reproductive challenges (Reference 2). The spores of this mushroom, which as the name suggests are in fact purple, also are allergens. The majority of the scientific studies I could find on the mushroom focused on their allergenic effects on humans and noted that the spores have three distinct allergens. In fact, one of the keynote speakers in Cape Cod, Noah Siegel, said he had to get sinus surgery because he’d inhaled so many spores throughout his decades of mushrooming. Not good!
Ecology
The fungus is saprobic, decomposing dead organic material in lawns (quite possibly dead grass/grass clippings). The mushroom has a cosmopolitan distribution and can be found on every continent outside of Antarctica. This seems to be an autumnal mushroom as the majority of iNaturalist observations peak in September and October. In the southern hemisphere, however, I’d imagine you’d see this mushroom in the spring.
When we last talked about puffballs we learned that the sac is called the peridium. Well, the peridium is made up of two layers and the outer layer is called the exoperidium. Pieces of the exoperidium, especially the base, typically persist in the environment long after the spores have blown away.
The other species you’ll run into, and the species I initially thought this was, is the giant puffball (Calvatia gigantea). Unlike in some instances with look-a-like mushrooms, there’s actually a fairly easy way to distinguish between these two species. Giant puffballs get much larger - nearly 5 ft/1.2 m across and weigh up to 50 lb/23 kg - compared to our purple-spored C. cyathiformis which tops out around 20 cm/8 in across. The other reliable, distinguishing characteristic is that the purple-spored puffball develops those marks on the exoperidium.
There’s this comet that is flying by earth, the A3 Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, and many folks excluding myself have been getting good views of it. I’m gonna try to get my eyes on it, but it’s headed away from Earth as we speak. Although it’s supposed to be around until the end of the month, the best viewing opportunity seems to have passed. Have any of you seen it or gotten pictures? I have heard that it helps to look through your phone’s camera to help you find it, but regardless I simply cannot find this comet for the life of me. Oh well.
Look west, I guess,
Aubrey
References:
Kuo, M. (2016, September). Calvatia cyathiformis. Retrieved from the MushroomExpert.Com Web site: http://www.mushroomexpert.com/calvatia_cyathiformis.html
Oyetayo OV. Medicinal uses of mushrooms in Nigeria: towards full and sustainable exploitation. Afr J Tradit Complement Altern Med. 2011;8(3):267-74. doi: 10.4314/ajtcam.v8i3.65289. Epub 2011 Apr 2. PMID: 22468005; PMCID: PMC3252220.
Horner WE, Lopez M, Salvaggio JE, Lehrer SB. Basidiomycete allergy: identification and characterization of an important allergen from Calvatia cyathiformis. Int Arch Allergy Appl Immunol. 1991;94(1-4):359-61. doi: 10.1159/000235403. PMID: 1937899.
https://www.inaturalist.org/taxa/153296-Calvatia-cyathiformis