The mushroom you can't get wrong

I have a good friend called Hodge who, like me, takes his dogs for long walks in the countryside every day. He lives a couple of miles away from me so his walking routes are different to mine. And I'll confess to being slightly envious that he regularly comes across one of my favourite fungi. 

It's one that's impossible to misidentify. It's the giant puffball.

Hodge is a good forager and a good friend. He never takes more than he needs so he grabs one big one for himself and one for me. And, as they usually appear between July and September I'm waiting by the phone for this year's treat.

They are a delight to cook - they taste just like your normal shop-bought field mushrooms but they are solid flesh right through so you can cut yourself some big 'steaks' that are delicious lightly fried with butter and ramsons (wild garlic). My favourite method is to make an escalope or schnitzel by dipping in egg and breadcrumbs and frying them. 

Image: Wild Food UK

Sadly, the only puffballs growing local to me are not the giant ones. There are around 20 members of the puffball family and my advice is to give all of them - bar the distinctive giant - a wide berth. The reason is that some poisonous mushrooms look like small puffballs. A few of the Amanita and Stinkhorn families grow in the shape of an elongated 'egg', and round Earthballs - also known as 'poison pigskin puffballs' account for the second highest number of mushroom poisonings in the UK each year. They are not deadly, but can make you very ill. Just stick to the giant variety as they are pretty unmistakeable due to their size.

All puffballs start off as firm and 'meaty' but, when mature, the interior transforms into millions of spores with only a paper thin skin holding them in. The mushrooms are then light enough to be pulled from the ground and blown around, therefore spreading the spores. Even one raindrop hitting the mushroom can split the skin and cause the spores to shoot out of the fungi at a velocity of about 100 cm/second. A single puff like this can release over a million spores and they are so fine that it looks like smoke - just don't get too close and breathe too many in as there have been cases of the fungus growing in the lungs.

Here's one I did earlier.

An average Giant Puffball can produce seven trillion spores. But the spores are extremely fussy and a bare few will ever grow to maturity. This is good news. It has been calculated that if every spore from one mushroom germinated and the same happened to that generation, it would produce a mass of fungi 800 times the volume of the Earth.

Puffballs are a ‘Decay Fungus’ and play a massively important role in the care of our environment. Along with the likes of Oyster Mushrooms and Honey Fungus, they are one of the few living organisms that are able to break down and decompose the toughest material found in wood - lignin.* Without them, our planet would be covered in fallen trees and organic matter.

But my favourite puffball fact? The scientific name for the Puffball family is Lycoperdon.

Which translates as Wolf Farts.

* Lignin, which is present in all wood-based paper, is closely related to vanillin. As it breaks down,  lignin releases a scent quite reminiscent of vanilla. So now you know why old books smell so good.