Puffballs and Earthstars
(Calvatia, Lycoperdon & Geastrum spp.)
For such an unassuming mushroom, these little guys have salted the entire earth. They're found on every continent that harbours plant life, including Greenland and Iceland. They've earned quite the reputation, being featured on stamps worldwide and referenced far more than any other fungi in Western ethno-botanical literature. In a culture riddled with mycophobes, the puffball insinuates itself because it appears so non-threatening as to be adorable, the brunt of jokes.
While nearly all puffballs are edible, puffballs are only edible while the flesh inside remains pure white. You must find them in their first few days above ground. They waste no time sporulating, their insides turning to olive-tinged goo.
The trait that earns puffballs their name is the way they release their spores. Once their insides liquefy and then dessicate, the flesh dries to the texture of fallen leaves and a hole opens up in their pale noggins. Thus, open to the elements, wind, human, or animal brushing past will release a puff of spores. They're the dandelions of the fungus world, plentiful and resourceful, tenacious and cute, sending their seeds out on the breeze.
Like humans, they are most often found in clusters. They resemble a spherical marshmallow. Gem studded puffballs are distinguished by their diamond encrusted skin and inverted pear shape. And the Earthstars, well, they look like spaceships, which brings me to my favourite theory as to how they mastered world travel long before the invention of the airplane.
As with all good stories, we'll have to travel back to a land before time. Close your eyes, imagine you wake up to a bright light streaming through your bedroom window. A force like a magnet, pulls you, pyjamas and all, through the glass of your window, as though solids no longer exist. And you find yourself moving backwards in time to...
The Day the Puffballs Came
I must have been sleepwalking again. It's becoming a real problem. Once, I cut my finger making a sandwich and woke to see blood pulsing from the tip. And last time, my alarm was my mom shaking me awake from where I'd tumbled to rest at the bottom of the stairs.
This time, I awake in the woods. Thin moonlight slices my nightgown. My skin shivers in ripples. Birch trees surround me, their skeletal fingers caging me in. They claw at my hair. I have no idea where I am, but I couldn't have gotten far, right? I'm only small.
I've never heard such quiet before. The kind of quiet that blankets your eardrums before a thunderstorm, or when a predator prowls close in the woods. A silence heavy with presence, dense with possibility. I can hear my panicked breathing, tiny creatures rustling in the leaves.
A zinging sound interrupts the silence. The sound of winter nights, the tin shriek of electricity trapped in wires. Spring-like I unwind. My head swivels toward the sound, but I spin in circles. It emits from all around, a shrillness piercing the thin air.
Through the cracking branches I see the sky open wide. I always had my suspicions that this happened while I slept. Living in Northern Canada, where the sun doesn't go down in summer until past midnight, I'd fidget under my tightly tucked sheets long after bedtime, long before dark, knowing I was missing countless unfathomable happenings. And those who did see the happenings, we thought them insane. Like Randy, the pizza guy in town with cameras on his deck recording the night sky. He’s seen this before, and doesn't want to miss a minute of it.
Aliens.
That's what he's hoping to see.
How many times has he seen the sky open wide and rain down in chili pepper fire? Has he met people from other worlds? Is that why, every time he delivers our pizza, his hair stands more on end, his movements become more erratic? A deer deciding whether it should run or stay.
We make fun of him. We throw water balloons with glow sticks wrapped inside, aiming so they sail across the camera's view. We snicker behind our hands when we overhear him the next day at the diner, telling a customer about his new footage.
I feel bad for him now, especially because I think I’m about to become just like him. One who has seen…
A flaming spaceship has just struck the ground beside my foot.
I bend at the waist to pick the ember up. My hand recoils, expecting it to be hot, but it's cool to the touch, like reptile skin. Not a chili pepper at all, but a tiny ball.
One by one my fingers creak open. A chalky white light leaks between them. The moon struggling to pierce through layers of smoke and cloud.
The light pulses, then flickers out.
All at once the stars stop falling. The sky closes back up. The silence folds around me like a blanket.
My attention zooms in on the orb in my palm.
It wiggles.
It shifts.
It jumps.
My knee-jerk response is to squeeze. It squeezes back, plush as a marshmallow. Then, like an egg, it splits down the middle, sprouts legs, and stands in the cup of my palm looking back at me. My hand raises of its own accord, bringing him closer to my ear so he can whisper, whisper what? He says, “look up.”
Another falling star, left behind in the shower, knocks me right on top of my head.
And I wake back in my bed with the moonlight streaming through my window. My window-pane feels cool and solid. The particles won't part for me to slip through. The moonlight is not a beam transporting me to another planet.
I sigh relief. My breath slowly returns to normal.
Something soft presses against my palm. I peel back each finger, the same as I had in the clearing between the pines, underneath the sliver of moon. I can't help noticing that my hands are five-pointed, like a classic depiction of a star.
A tiny round mushroom nestles in my hand, blinking back at me.
Stranger than Fiction
If Amanita is the most visually recorded mushroom, puffball is the most written about. Even the Medieval herbals, that regarded mushrooms with suspicion, mention the puffball's usefulness as a styptic, one who stops the flow of blood. And in the folklore of the people who walked this continent before spore and seed encrusted European footsteps altered the land, the puffball pops up almost universally, especially among the people of the Plains.
The Blackfoot word for them, ka-ka-toos, translates to fallen stars. According to legend, these fallen stars served as harbingers of supernatural events, or of the souls of those who have passed. They painted such tales on tipis. Like the puffball, there's more to these designs than meets the eye, unique to tribes or families, they indicated status and histories, and portrayed myths.
A typical tipi design displays three distinct horizontal zones. A dark coloured ring around the base that represents Mother Earth, mountain ranges or hills painted around the top that provide protection and perspective, and in the middle plain, white orbs circle the ring. These orbs represent puffball fungus found in circles on the plains. The circle is a symbol of continuity and the inter-connectivity of all life. And finally, because dried puffballs serve as excellent fire-starter, the circle of puffballs blessed those inside the tipi with a fire that would not go out.
A tap on the fungus releases a clouds of spores resembling a puff of smoke. Smoke is widely regarded as a messenger to the Creator, so the puffballs had a direct line to the sky, where the Blackfeet people came from.
I had this explained to me by a Blackfoot elder after a particularly difficult sweat ceremony. The fire had burned low and hot and the song he sang had brought a heavy weight down on my shoulders, the weight of our responsibility to care for all of our relations. The way we've been taking from them has long been out of balance. We've been eating at their table and never inviting them to ours. The world we've created only benefits people, our people and no-one else.
The ancestors that he had invited into the ceremony seemed disappointed. A disembodied grandmother whispered in my ear, “You have everything, but you're starving.”
I emerged from the third round, one more to go. Lingering smoke stung my eyes and singed my throat. Aches moved in waves through my body. Sweat dripped in tendrils from my hair as I vomited beside the lodge.
The elder came and knelt beside me, a huddle in his blankets. How had he worn those in the heat of the lodge? He pointed to a circle of puffballs that I hadn't noticed before. As we gazed into the middle of the ring, so like the circle of stones that holds the fire, he told me that puffballs are his closest friends. That he pokes them when he has a question he wants to ask the ancestors. He blows the question on the puff of spore smoke that rises from them and waits for an answer. He says it usually comes from an animal, or in the form of a random spoken word, a snippet of overheard conversation as he leaves the forest and enters the human world again. Spiritually, puffballs can be messengers and guides.
Medicinally, puffballs hold great importance to all people who know their uses. The puffball gone to spore serves as an excellent styptic. The dried powder applied to wounds stops bleeding and helps ward off infection. This use is also listed in many old herbal texts from Europe. It appears to be a well-known attribute of the friendly puffball.
Their ability to heal the skin rouses curiosity as to the symbology. The more I learn of the history of this land, the recent clash of cultures that occurred here and continues to unfold as we struggle to reconcile the imposition of one world on top of another.
As settlers came and moved across the land, they left in their wake a trail of very specific plants and mushrooms: common plantain, dandelion, burdock, puffballs, caragana. Whether by intentional planting or spreading as hitchhikers, the deed was done, the character of the landscape changed forever. The ecological effects of which extend beyond the scope of this text. These plants now make their home here. Collectively, I call them the healers. Their common interest is the reclamation of disturbed land. They flourish on lawns, roadsides, driveways, sidewalk cracks, landslide sites, fields and turned earth. Their roots break up compacted earth and their dying bodies build up stripped topsoil, they capture nitrogen and fix it in the soil. They follow the humans like some mycorrhizal mushrooms follow the trees, patching up the land at our feet. They have their work cut out for them.
Puffballs walk the same path. They follow our movements, and heal our wounds.
How I met them:
After learning of their sacred consideration in Blackfoot culture, I’m a bit sheepish to share this story. But, it's true, so here goes.
The first time I met the puffball, I picked up a strange object on the playground. Long since past its phase of resembling a ping pong ball, its skin had turned to brown paper and when I squeezed a puff of brown smoke erupted volcano-like from a hole in the top. It had a faint dusty smell.
“Cooool.” I uttered in appreciation.
My friend Kristen asked, “What's cool?” and I threw it at her head, shouting, “STINK BOMB!!!” She ducked and held her nose, shouting, “Ew!”
And that was how I met the puffball.
How you can meet the Little guy:
You probably already have. As I've mentioned, they tend to follow us as we tromp around the earth. A few days after a decent rain, go for a walk along a park pathway, scan the ditches for little white balls. Check your lawn or the abandoned lot by your house. Scope old garden plots and look on the tops of fallen logs. They like pretending to be human, so they're often in large groups chattering away, making the little fellas hard to miss.
Though they're not always little...
In a field down a country lane, you might spot what looks like a volleyball from the road. Put your car in park and let curiosity take you.
As you walk out to meet it, you swear it rolls away from you. It feels as though you've been walking forever. It shifts to the side, you dodge to line yourself up with it again, checking against the position of the tree line to make sure you're not hallucinating.
It expands as you approach, puffing itself up to look bigger, more threatening. Its noggin swells nearly to your knees. From up close the size looks nearer to basketball than volleyball.
You bend down to touch it and it shivers beneath your fingers. You realize how cold your hand feels because it feels warm, alive. Did it just breathe beneath your palm? You can't be sure. When you turn to go, your car looks as though it's shrunk to the size of a volleyball. That's how far you've wandered into the field. You'll want company for the long walk. Ask the wandering mushroom if it would like to join you. If it nods yes, take out your pocketknife and slide open the blade. Bend down and feel around until you find the point where a narrow stem disappears into the earth. It'll make you think of the nipple on a balloon. Slice its stem free from where it meets the soil, so you don't disturb the substrate. Hoist him into your arms and make your meandering way back to the car. You'll be amazed at how light he feels, how soft yet firm his flesh. He won't mind being tossed into the air a few times; you might even hear him laugh gleefully.
Make sure you remember where you found him. Make note of landmarks and be sure to glance at the next road sign you see. Because, if I know puffballs, his friends will be up looking for him after the next rainfall, and you can take them home with you too.
How to know if you've met them:
Pretty easy to identify and foolproof if you remember to always slice them open before you eat them. This is for two reasons:
The first is that you want to ensure the flesh is still springy and white all the way through. If it has started to yellow or brown and turn spongy, it simply won't taste good and can even make you sick.
The second is that certain types of poisonous amanitas start their life out as an egg that resembles the puffball. If you slice one open and can trace the outline of a tiny mushroom inside, admire the magic but do not eat it!
There are a variety of edible puffballs: the giant, the gem-studded, the classic white puff, the earthstar, and so on. With such a variety, this is the ideal moment to share with you the method that was taught to me when I first started learning about mushrooms; when I stood at the base of a mountain of knowledge and shook with fear, fear of what I didn't know, fear of all the mushrooms that had sinister intentions.
Blessedly, I received this piece of wisdom from an elder forager who was kind enough to take two or three amateurs out in his station wagon and show them his prime hunting spots on the public lands around Calgary. If you were quiet, kept up with his rapid pace and didn't get lost, he'd share his tips and tricks with you. One such day, he excitedly introduced me to the pigskin. Under his breath, as though the pigskin would hear and leap down our throats for knowing his secret, he told me about “working backwards”. In working backwards, you learn the faces of all the poisonous ones, especially all those that impersonate the yummy ones.
Using this approach, you only have to learn one puffball. The only one known to be poisonous is Scleroderma citrinum, alias: the poison pigskin puffball or the common earth ball. And you're in luck, the most you'll get is an upset tummy if you mistakenly fry this guy up.
Besides, he's easy to distinguish from the common puffball – a smooth, creamy white skin all over, and the gem-studded puffball – closer to an inverted pear shape than a ball and encrusted with little pyramid shaped gems. In comparison, this guy looks like he has a skin condition, and perhaps that's why there's one named after him (or is he named after it?). Regardless of what came first, the mushroom or the skin condition, the pigskin puffball is so named because it has a scaly skin (think pork rinds) that stains pink when it is sliced. It darkens inside comparatively quickly and turns purple-black, as opposed to olive-green. Avoid him for all but photos and you'll be just fine in the realm of puffball cuisine.
Remember: Make sure the ones you've found are round, stemless, and pure white. Especially make sure they do not have an embryonic mushroom inside and that they don't have a thick, scaly skin.
Recommended preparation
The texture has been compared to tofu or scallops. To play to this, slice to the thickness of a crepe. Soak in oil and roll in batter. Sear on both sides.
It soaks up sauces nicely, mingles well in stir-fries, and the unassuming flavour integrates into many asian-inspired dishes.
For breakfast, fry in oil and add to omelettes or scrambles.
They also swim skillfully in soups. Imagine slices of hard-boiled egg and puffball floating atop a steaming bowl of ramen. Yum.
European pioneers loved them. They recognized them from back home. Their texture meshes beautifully with potatoes. Try sliced thinly atop scalloped potatoes or mixed in to a Shepherd's pie.
Mushroom gathering;
Today let's go on till we fall over
The roots of the trees
~Kaso
I love your writing so much, Kitty! It takes me to another world! 🥰