CHAPTER XI: PUFFBALLS 



ORDER LYCOPERDALES 



The pouch fungi include all fungi which have their spores 

 or seeds in closed chambers until maturity — that is, until they are 

 fully ripe and ready to be scattered by winds or animals. Col- 

 lectively, the closed chambers are called the gleba, and this gleba 

 is surrounded by a definite rind (peridium), which, in different 

 puffballs, has various and characteristic ways of opening to per- 

 mit the spores to escape. 



The different ways in which the rinds (peridia) open are 

 explained under the separate examples of the pouch fungi — 

 puffballs, earth-stars, stinkhorns, birds' nests, and calostomas. 



The Lycoperdales, known in different parts of the country as 

 smokeballs, devil's snuffboxes, puffballs, etc., have their spores 

 enclosed until maturity in closed chambers, surrounded by a con- 

 tinuous skin or peridium. They spend most of their lifetime 

 underground, getting their food from decaying vegetable matter, 

 and are for this reason called subterranean saprophytes. When 

 they are about ready to scatter their spores, they emerge from the 

 ground, and are then to be seen in pastures, and on fallen logs in 

 woods and along roadsides. Every country child has pinched 

 them to see the " smoke" rise, little knowing that he was doing 

 for the puffball just that for which it had come into existence — 

 scattering its spores far and wide to grow into new plants. 



The plants of the puffballs, the mycelial threads, form an 

 extensive network of white threads in the decaying vegetable 

 matter in which they grow ; then little balls appear on the white 

 threads, as in the Agaricales, with the difference that they in- 

 crease in size without forming gills and stem. The balls have 

 a fleshy interior, cheesy and white at first, but afterwards yel- 

 lowish or pinkish, gradually darkening until the whole or a part 



Ly'-co-pSr-da'-Ies 

 123 



