{"id":296,"date":"2013-10-28T10:39:12","date_gmt":"2013-10-28T14:39:12","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/?p=296"},"modified":"2013-11-10T11:37:31","modified_gmt":"2013-11-10T16:37:31","slug":"ghoulish-puffballs-now-in-local-woods","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/2013\/10\/28\/ghoulish-puffballs-now-in-local-woods\/","title":{"rendered":"Ghoulish puffballs now in local woods"},"content":{"rendered":"

Although at little out of the plant realm, fall is puffball mushroom season.\u00a0 While fall botanizing in open woods, I often come across these startling-look fungi.\u00a0 At first glance they look just like human skulls stuck in the ground.\u00a0 When they first come up they are bright white, then they fade to a very skull-like yellow-brownish color.\u00a0 As they age and dry, the turn papery on the outside and, when bumped, puff out a cloud of spores.<\/p>\n

\"Skull-like<\/a>

Skull-like puffball<\/p><\/div>\n

Puffballs are reportedly edible (warning: I never advocate eating anything from the wild unless you are an expert at identification) and I have tried them (my husband, Dr. Tom Dolan is a mycologist and identifies mushrooms for the Indiana Poison Control Center).\u00a0 Puffballs are the consistency of tofu or mushy Styrofoam, but suck up flavor from saut\u00e9ed butter.<\/p>\n

The puffball is the \u201cfruit\u201d of a mushroom that spends most of its time as tiny filaments called mycelia that spread through the soil making a living as decomposers.\u00a0 When conditions are right, they produce puffballs as fruiting bodies to disperse their spores.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Although at little out of the plant realm, fall is puffball mushroom season.\u00a0 While fall botanizing in open woods, I often come across these startling-look fungi.\u00a0 At first glance they look just like human skulls stuck in the ground.\u00a0 When … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":679,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"ngg_post_thumbnail":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[223596],"class_list":["post-296","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-puff-balls"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/679"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=296"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":300,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/296\/revisions\/300"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=296"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=296"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.butler.edu\/indianaplants\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=296"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}