Bovista plumbea

What You Should Know

Bovista plumbea is a small puffball mushroom commonly found in Western Europe and California, white when young and brown in age.

Edible when young. A young specimen is more difficult to distinguish because it is completely white outside which leads us to similar puffballs. So you'll have to cut them to see what's under the skin, it should be always gray.

Only after some time white membrane around the bulb come off, and the gray pollen bulb becomes visible.

Very old specimens completely lack the white membrane.

Other names: Paltry Puffball, Rolling Puffball, Gray Puffball, Loodgrijze bovist (Netherlands), Prášivka šedivá (Czech), Bleigrauer Zwergbovist (German), La boviste plombée (France).

Bovista plumbea Mushroom Identification

1. Fruiting Body

   1-5 cm diameter, rounded or flattened-rounded, with a thin root, without sterile tissue under the glebe.

2. Outer Shell

   The exoperidium is thin, initially white, cream, later brown, dirty-white in the upper part of the fruit body, breaks and falls off when ripe, remaining only in the lower part.

3. Inner Shell

   The endoperidium is dense, smooth, at first gray, later blackish-gray, lead-gray, steel, when ripe, a hole is formed at the top of the fruit body for the release of spores.

4. Flesh

   The flesh is initially white, yellowish-olive, brown with a purple tint when mature, powdery, without a pronounced smell.

5. Spores

   5.0–6.5 x 4.0–5.5 µm, ovoid, thick-walled, and nearly smooth, with a central oil droplet, and a 7.5–11.5 µm pedicel. The capillitium is composed of individual elements, rather than interwoven, main branches thick-walled, flexuous, rapidly tapering, forking more or less dichotomously, ochre-colored in KOH. The spores are released via a small apical pore.

6. Spore Mass

   Brown.

7. Habitat

   Grows from early Summer to September, in forests, meadows, roadsides, fields, gardens, poor and sandy soils.

Bovista plumbea Look-Alikes

1. Lycoperdon perlatum

   Is covered in warts rather than spines.

2. Lycoperdon pyriforme

   Grows on stumps and buried wood.

3. Lycoperdon mammiforme

   The surface is covered in woolly patches.

4. Calvatia gigantea

   Similar in the early stages of development its outer skin (peridium) but much larger.

Bovista plumbea Taxonomy and Etymology

In 1796 Christiaan Hendrik Persoon described this species and give it the binomial name Bovista plumbea.

The generic name Bovista comes from the old German vohenvist - vohe meaning a fox and vīst an emission of gas from the colon, which is a reference to the odor of the spore dust released from these mushrooms.

The specific epithet plumbea means 'leaden' and refers to the grayish color of the inner peridium of this fungus.

Bovista plumbea Synonyms and Varieties

• Lycoperdon ardosiacum Bull., 1784

• Bovista ardosiaca (Bull.) Herter, 1933

• Bovista brevicauda Velen., 1922

• Bovista macrospora Perdeck, 1950

• Bovista nigra Velen., 1947

• Bovista nuciformis Wallr., 1833

• Bovista ovalispora Cooke & Massee 1887

• Bovista pallida Velen., 1922

• Bovista plumbea Pers. 1796

• Bovista plumbea var. ovalispora (Cooke & Massee) F. Šmarda 1958

• Bovista purpurea Lloyd, 1923

• Bovista sulphurea Velen., 1947

• Bovista tunicata Fr., 1829

• Calvatia bovista (L.) Pers. 1896

• Globaria plumbea (Pers.) Quél., 1873

• Lycoperdon arrhizum Batsch, 1786

• Lycoperdon bovista Sowerby 1803

• Lycoperdon plumbeum Vittad. 1842