My daughter noticed a bunch of “polkadots” in our yard today as she came off the school bus. She wanted to know what they are. I assume that they are a fungus, some sort of mushroom perhaps. Each is spherical, with no visible stem. They are growing in small patches on our yard, in areas where the grass is struggling (to put it mildly). It’s was a very dry summer here (we live in southwest Ohio) and a lot of the vegetation was burnt out from the sun/lack of rain. The surface is rough, almost spikey, and they are uniformly white. The largest we found was almost 0.75 inches in diameter. Some are quite tiny yet, but most are about 0.25-0.50 inches in diameter.
Any ideas what they are? And while we’re at it, are they killing my grass or just feasting on the deadspots?
Don’t eat it, whatever you do. Rather, don’t let her eat it.
Where do you live? In New England, there are little spherical, stemless fungi we call “puffballs” that emit a smoky sort of vapor (spores, I imagine) when punctured. The smoke is NOT good to inhale - while human lungs are not the best places for that organism to grow, they are remarkably good at poisoning you.
Acutally, puffballs, when immature (before they form spores) are not only nontoxic, but delicious.
Although I don’t recomment that ShibbOleth eat what’s growing in his front yard. Some species of toxic mushrooms resemble puffball bushrooms when they first emerge from the ground.
I suppose they could be immature puff balls. I was a kid once so I’m familiar with those. But I thought they had a more smooth outer texture and are normally white mottled with brown. Of I am not a mycologist, which is why I’ve asked here.
Not all puffballs (and similar fungi that aren’t true puffballs) are edible; some are mildly poisonous. Never eat wild fungi unless you have positively identified them (and by ‘identify’, I mean that you should be able to match every feature described in the reference material, including, but not limited to appearance, smell, habitat, season) - the number of common poisonous species is fairly small, but the consequence of error is serious.
From your sketchy desription, yours sound like they could be some species of Lycoperdon.
The little spikes on these puffballs often rub off easily to leave a mosaic pattern.
Mangetout, the link you gave seems to be about right. Main difference is size, and that some of the Lycoperdon had stems. We’ll monitor to see if they get much bigger and go from there. They do seem to be a form of “puffball”. Thanks, all.
Lycoperdon is quite a large genus; I believe some of the species therein have less pronounced stalks (and/or stalks that elongate as the fruiting body matures)