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Puffballs
Puffballs are a type of fungus featuring a ball-shaped fruit body that bursts on impact, releasing a cloud of dust-like spores when mature. Puffballs belong to the division Basidiomycota and encompass several genera, including ''Calvatia'', ''Calbovista'' and ''Lycoperdon''. The puffballs were previously treated as a taxonomic group called the Gasteromycetes or Gasteromycetidae, but they are now known to be a polyphyletic assemblage. The distinguishing feature of all puffballs is that they do not have an open cap with spore-bearing gills. Instead, spores are produced internally, in a spheroidal fruit body called a ''gasterothecium'' (gasteroid 'stomach-like' basidiocarp). As the spores mature, they form a mass called a gleba in the centre of the fruitbody that is often of a distinctive color and texture. The basidiocarp remains closed until after the spores have been released from the basidia. Eventually, it develops an aperture, or dries, becomes brittle, and splits, and the ...
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Puffball Fungai
Puffballs are a type of fungus featuring a ball-shaped fruit body that bursts on impact, releasing a cloud of dust-like spores when mature. Puffballs belong to the division Basidiomycota and encompass several genera, including '' Calvatia'', '' Calbovista'' and '' Lycoperdon''. The puffballs were previously treated as a taxonomic group called the Gasteromycetes or Gasteromycetidae, but they are now known to be a polyphyletic assemblage. The distinguishing feature of all puffballs is that they do not have an open cap with spore-bearing gills. Instead, spores are produced internally, in a spheroidal fruit body called a ''gasterothecium'' (gasteroid 'stomach-like' basidiocarp). As the spores mature, they form a mass called a gleba in the centre of the fruitbody that is often of a distinctive color and texture. The basidiocarp remains closed until after the spores have been released from the basidia. Eventually, it develops an aperture, or dries, becomes brittle, and splits, and t ...
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Lycoperdon Perlatum
''Lycoperdon perlatum'', popularly known as the common puffball, warted puffball, gem-studded puffball, wolf farts or the devil's snuff-box, is a species of puffball fungus in the family Agaricaceae. A widespread species with a cosmopolitan distribution, it is a medium-sized puffball with a round fruit body tapering to a wide stalk, and dimensions of wide by tall. It is off-white with a top covered in short spiny bumps or "jewels", which are easily rubbed off to leave a netlike pattern on the surface. When mature it becomes brown, and a hole in the top opens to release spores in a burst when the body is compressed by touch or falling raindrops. The puffball grows in fields, gardens, and along roadsides, as well as in grassy clearings in woods. It is edible when young and the internal flesh is completely white, although care must be taken to avoid confusion with immature fruit bodies of poisonous ''Amanita'' species. ''L. perlatum'' can usually be distinguished from ...
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Gasteromycetes
The gasteroid fungi are a group of fungi in the Basidiomycota. Species were formerly placed in the obsolete class Gasteromycetes Fr. (literally "stomach fungi"), or the equally obsolete order Gasteromycetales Rea, because they produce spores inside their basidiocarps (fruit bodies) rather than on an outer surface. However, the class is polyphyletic, as such species—which include puffballs, earthstars, stinkhorns, and false truffles—are not closely related to each other. Because they are often studied as a group, it has been convenient to retain the informal (non- taxonomic) name of "gasteroid fungi". History Several gasteroid fungi—such as the stinkhorn, ''Phallus impudicus'' L.—were formally described by Carl Linnaeus in his original ''Species Plantarum'' of 1753, but the first critical treatment of the group was by Christiaan Hendrik Persoon in his ''Synopsis methodica fungorum'' of 1801. Until 1981, this book was the starting point for the naming of ...
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Calbovista Subsculpta
''Calbovista'' is a fungal genus containing the single species ''Calbovista subsculpta'', commonly known as the sculptured puffball, sculptured giant puffball, and warted giant puffball. It is a common puffball of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast ranges of western North America. The puffball is more or less round with a diameter of up to , white becoming brownish in age, and covered with shallow pyramid-shaped plates or scales. It fruits singly or in groups along roads and in open woods at high elevations, from summer to autumn. Although the puffball was originally described as new to science by Elizabeth Eaton Morse in 1935, it was not published validly until 60 years later. The species is named for its resemblance to '' Calvatia sculpta'', from which it can be usually distinguished in the field by its less prominent pyramidal warts, and microscopically by the antler-like branches of its capillitium (thread-like material among the spores). ''Calbovista subsculpta'' is a go ...
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Calbovista
''Calbovista'' is a fungal genus containing the single species ''Calbovista subsculpta'', commonly known as the sculptured puffball, sculptured giant puffball, and warted giant puffball. It is a common puffball of the Rocky Mountains and Pacific Coast ranges of western North America. The puffball is more or less round with a diameter of up to , white becoming brownish in age, and covered with shallow pyramid-shaped plates or scales. It fruits singly or in groups along roads and in open woods at high elevations, from summer to autumn. Although the puffball was originally described as new to science by Elizabeth Eaton Morse in 1935, it was not published validly until 60 years later. The species is named for its resemblance to ''Calvatia sculpta'', from which it can be usually distinguished in the field by its less prominent pyramidal warts, and microscopically by the antler-like branches of its capillitium (thread-like material among the spores). ''Calbovista subsculpta'' is a g ...
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Basidiomycota
Basidiomycota () is one of two large divisions that, together with the Ascomycota, constitute the subkingdom Dikarya (often referred to as the "higher fungi") within the kingdom Fungi. Members are known as basidiomycetes. More specifically, Basidiomycota includes these groups: mushrooms, puffballs, stinkhorns, bracket fungi, other polypores, jelly fungi, boletes, chanterelles, earth stars, smuts, bunts, rusts, mirror yeasts, and ''Cryptococcus'', the human pathogenic yeast. Basidiomycota are filamentous fungi composed of hyphae (except for basidiomycota-yeast) and reproduce sexually via the formation of specialized club-shaped end cells called basidia that normally bear external meiospores (usually four). These specialized spores are called basidiospores. However, some Basidiomycota are obligate asexual reproducers. Basidiomycota that reproduce asexually (discussed below) can typically be recognized as members of this division by gross similarity to others, by the forma ...
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Secotioid
Secotioid fungi are an intermediate growth form between mushroom-like hymenomycetes and closed bag-shaped gasteromycetes, where an evolutionary process of gasteromycetation has started but not run to completion. Secotioid fungi may or may not have opening caps, but in any case they often lack the vertical geotropic orientation of the hymenophore needed to allow the spores to be dispersed by wind, and the basidiospores are not forcibly discharged or otherwise prevented from being dispersed (e.g. gills completely inclosed and never exposed as in the secotioid form of ''Lentinus tigrinus'')—note—some mycologists do not consider a species to be secotioid unless it has lost ballistospory. Explanation of secotioid development and gasteromycetation Historically agarics and boletes (which bear their spores on a hymenium of gills or tubes respectively) were classified quite separately from the gasteroid fungi, such as puff-balls and truffles, of which the spores are formed in ...
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Hymenomycetes
Hymenomycetes was formerly the largest taxonomic group of fungi within the division Basidiomycota, but the term is no longer taxonomically relevant. Many familiar fungi belong to this class, including bracket fungi and toadstools. This class contained the orders Agaricales, Boletales, and Russulales. The erstwhile class, now understood to be a polyphyletic assemblage of basidiomycetes, refers to fungi with fruit bodies whose hymenophore develops in an exposed manner, or only with a veil (velum). These forms are termed gymnocarpic or hemiangiocarpic ontogeny, respectively. A contrasting example of hymenophore development is the puffballs, which undergo gasterocarpic development (hymenophore enclosed). See also *Agaricomycetes The Agaricomycetes are a class of fungi in the division Basidiomycota. The taxon is roughly identical to that defined for the Homobasidiomycetes (alternatively called holobasidiomycetes) by Hibbett & Thorn, with the inclusion of Auriculariales ... Ref ...
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Spore
In biology, a spore is a unit of sexual or asexual reproduction that may be adapted for dispersal and for survival, often for extended periods of time, in unfavourable conditions. Spores form part of the life cycles of many plants, algae, fungi and protozoa. Bacterial spores are not part of a sexual cycle, but are resistant structures used for survival under unfavourable conditions. Myxozoan spores release amoeboid infectious germs ("amoebulae") into their hosts for parasitic infection, but also reproduce within the hosts through the pairing of two nuclei within the plasmodium, which develops from the amoebula. In plants, spores are usually haploid and unicellular and are produced by meiosis in the sporangium of a diploid sporophyte. Under favourable conditions the spore can develop into a new organism using mitotic division, producing a multicellular gametophyte, which eventually goes on to produce gametes. Two gametes fuse to form a zygote which develops into a ...
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Agaricales
The fungal order Agaricales, also known as gilled mushrooms (for their distinctive gills) or euagarics, contains some of the most familiar types of mushrooms. The order has 33 extant families, 413 genera, and over 13,000 described species, along with six extinct genera known only from the fossil record. They range from the ubiquitous common mushroom to the deadly destroying angel and the hallucinogenic fly agaric to the bioluminescent jack-o-lantern mushroom. History, classification and phylogeny In his three volumes of ''Systema Mycologicum'' published between 1821 and 1832, Elias Fries put almost all of the fleshy, gill-forming mushrooms in the genus ''Agaricus''. He organized the large genus into "tribes", the names of many of which still exist as common genera of today. Fries later elevated several of these tribes to generic level, but later authors—including Gillet, Karsten, Kummer, Quélet, and Staude—made most of the changes. Fries based his classification on ...
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Lycoperdon
''Lycoperdon'' is a genus of puffball mushrooms. The genus has a widespread distribution and contains about 50 species. In general, it contains the smaller species such as the pear-shaped puffball and the gem-studded puffball. It was formerly classified within the now-obsolete order Lycoperdales, as the type genus which, following a restructuring of fungal taxonomy brought about by molecular phylogeny, has been split. ''Lycoperdon'' is now placed in the family Agaricaceae of the order Agaricales. The scientific name has been created with Greek words (''lycos'' meaning ''wolf'' and ''perdon'' meaning ''to fart'') and based on several European dialects in which the mushroom name sounds like ''wolf-farts''. Most species are edible, ranging from mild to tasting distinctly of shrimp. Species * '' Lycoperdon caudatum'' (Syn. ''Lycoperdon pedicellatum'') J.Schröt. * '' Lycoperdon curtisii'' * ''Lycoperdon echinatum'' Pers. * '' Lycoperdon ericaceum'' (Syn. ''Lycoperdon muscorum' ...
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Calvatia
''Calvatia'' is a genus of puffball mushrooms that includes the spectacular giant puffball ''C. gigantea''. It was formerly classified within the now-obsolete order Lycoperdales, which, following a restructuring of fungal taxonomy brought about by molecular phylogeny, has been split; the puffballs, ''Calvatia spp.'' are now placed in the family Agaricaceae of the order Agaricales. Most species in the genus ''Calvatia'' are edible when young, though some are best avoided, such as ''Calvatia fumosa'', which has a very pungent odor. The name ''Calvatia'' derives from the Latin ''calvus'' meaning "bald" and ''calvaria'', meaning "dome of the skull". Taxonomy ''Calvatia'' was circumscribed by Swedish mycologist Elias Magnus Fries in 1849. Fries included a single species in the genus, ''Calvatia craniiformis'', which was originally described as ''Bovista craniiformis'' by Lewis David de Schweinitz in 1832. Species , Index Fungorum lists 58 species of ''Calvatia''. * ...
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