Home / Other finds / TM0019
Puffball in grass
Lycoperdon or Calvatia Genus
Angles captured. Three close views from slightly different sides; no shot of the base or a cut section.
Morphology
Roughly spherical to slightly flattened, ~6–7 cm across, white to off-white, surface smooth to very finely granular with fine dark speckling developing over the upper half. No stalk visible above ground, no aperture yet — an immature, unopened fruitbody.
Habitat & substrate
In grass at a sunny trail edge with broadleaf herbs. Terrestrial, solitary, saprotrophic.
Lookalikes & what rules them out
An unopened Amanita egg looks very similar from outside. This is the single most important reason to cut a puffball in half.
To confirm this identification
Slice it top to bottom. A true puffball is uniformly white and solid throughout; an Amanita egg shows the outline of a cap, gills and stipe in cross-section. Also check whether the interior has begun to yellow.
Found at Broad Meadow Brook Wildlife Sanctuary, Worcester, MA on Friday, 31 July 2026 at 18:22. See the full walk for that day's weather and everything else recorded.
Others in this group
Earthballs in leaf litterScleroderma sp. · Oct 11Moderate
Weathered / grazed fruitbodies on an eroded bankcf. Russula · Jul 31Low
Pink-tan capped agaricUnidentified agaric · Jul 31Low
White-capped agaric in litterUnidentified agaric · Jul 31Low
White cap in leaf litterUnidentified agaric · Jul 31Low
Fly agaric buttonAmanita muscaria var. guessowii · Aug 1High
White agaric in grassUnidentified agaric · Aug 1Low
White mycelium in leaf litterMycelium · Aug 6