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’-c6-pér-da’-les 
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