Giant Puff Ball

While walking along the road, Cassidy and I stumbled upon two huge mushrooms, which we quickly identified as “giant puff balls”.  They appeared to just be sitting on the ground, with no apparent stem; we simply picked then up and walked away with them.

When immature, they have the consistency of a “normal” mushroom, and can be eaten; when ripe, they turn into a regular (albeit huge) puff ball.  The white one weighed 4.25 pounds; the dark one weighted 1.75 pounds.  Both had a leathery skin, and an inside that was more or less homogeneous.

Unfortunately, although the white one was white on the outside, the inside had already begun to ripen, and thus it was not edible.  We placed the mushrooms in likely spots, and hope to have our own next year, and to be able to harvest them in a more timely fashion.

To put this into perspective, the largest one ever found weighed 44 pounds!