I was working along the road when I glanced up the bank and saw what I thought was some trash just across the fence. My first thought was a partially deflated volleyball, but it also had the look of an old bleach jug. When my work was finished I went up to have a look.
It turned out not to be trash of any sort. It may have had the look and size of a volleyball, but the whole mass was the fruiting body of a large fungus. I had found a wonderful specimen of Giant Puffball,
Calvatia gigantea.
Giant Puffballs are common at Blue Jay Barrens, but their size is generally closer to that of a softball. My size ten Jungle Boots are exactly 12 inches from heel to toe, so they come in handy for impromptu measurements. I was trying to figure out how my puffball compared to the one
Cheryl saw, but I don’t have a boot to binocular conversion table.
The skin looks much like a cured animal hide and can be quite tough. Giant Puffballs have an excellent taste, but it’s the soft interior that’s consumed. The skin is peeled and discarded.
There was a second puffball nearby. This one had a hard time expanding beneath a mat of vines. A specimen of this size can produce many billions of spores that can get into the air currents and circle the globe. It’s interesting that so many fungi, whose spores have the ability to follow the jet stream and end up anywhere in the northern hemisphere, have definite ranges in which they are found. I guess some species have such specific conditions necessary for the spores to begin development that only limited areas of the globe can offer the necessary environment. It’s still amazing to think that the spore that began this fungus may have traveled around the world before coming to rest in this field.
For a second time, this Giant Puffball fungus has fooled me into thinking it was a piece of trash. The first time, I mistook the fresh fungus for an old volleyball. This time it looked like a piece of foam rubber cushion with a deteriorating plastic cover. The ridiculous part is the fact that I was doing the exact same thing, mowing along the road, and spotted the puffball from the exact same angle. In a month's time it has gone from a fleshy mass to a pile of dust. It’s a fascinating natural event, but it still reminds me of trash.
The mass of spores looks more like a clogged lint trap or an abused air filter than it does the source of millions of possible puffballs. 
Here are the remains of the Tough Puffball I found last month. This was growing on one of my mowed walking trails and I probably would have mowed it over if the grass had done any growing since then. A small portion of the puffball’s upper skin has remained in place, but most of the spore mass has been laid bare to the elements. 
Despite its ragged condition, the breeze continues to strip spores from the surface and carry them aloft for distribution in far locales. It can sometimes take months for the last of the spores to disappear. Winds this fall have come from all directions, so these spores have had the opportunity to travel many places far from their origin.
Wind isn’t the only dispersal mechanism transporting spores from this site. Raindrops splash spores onto the surrounding soil. Heavy rains fill the base of the puffball with water that carries spores as it flows off through gaps in the deteriorating side walls. Floating spores may be filtered from the water as it flows overland or they may be deposited by floodwater far downstream.
By next spring there should be nothing left here but an empty shell. It’s hard to predict how much area will ultimately receive spores from this one puffball. Under ideal conditions, it’s possible that the spores could cover the globe. Maybe this is my way of sharing a little bit of Blue Jay Barrens with the rest of the world. Let me know if any of my spores show up in your neighborhood.
