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veggie
Reged: 07/25/04
Posts: 6485
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5-pound mushroom turns heads [IN]
10/14/05 06:30 PM
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5-pound mushroom turns heads
October 11, 2005 - jconline.com
 Battle Ground residents Barry and Sharon Dishon are avid mushroom hunters. They thought they had seen it all.
The recent discovery of giant puffball mushrooms in rural Tippecanoe County stopped them in their tracks.
"I was really shocked when I saw them," Barry said.
"We've lived in the country all of our lives and have never seen anything like them."
The puffballs were found on their son's property in rural Tippecanoe County, outside West Lafayette. The acre of woods contains numerous puffballs, Sharon said.
Barry, 66, said he's hunted mushrooms for 55 years. Sharon, 64, said she has a fondness for the sponge morels that fry up in a skillet. Barry said it wasn't a good year for morels.
When Sharon brought a giant puffball into the Journal and Courier newsroom last Friday, heads turned. It weighed 5 pounds, 3 ounces and measured 36.5 inches in circumference. It felt like an under-inflated football. And it had an odor.
"This is a medium-size one," Sharon said while holding it up. "My son picked 10 of them and laid them on a trampoline.
"The biggest one was as big as a beach ball."
Sharon said most of the puffballs she's seen are about the size of a softball.
"You can stomp or kick them, and they explode into dust," she said.
Purdue expert Janna Beckerman laughed when told about the Dishon's encounter with the "calvatia gigantea" or the giant puffball. She has received phone calls and e-mails from people asking about the fungi.
"I tripped over some them the other day," she said.
Beckerman is an assistant professor in botany and plant pathology.
"They are so big because of the rainfall from (hurricanes) Katrina and Rita," she said. "Mushrooms thrive on warm weather and a lot of water."
She said a hot summer combined with hard rains to trigger the giants.
Beckerman cautioned people about eating wild mushrooms.
"I'd always rather be outside hunting mushrooms," she said. "It's a great time to hunt mushrooms.
"But unless you are certain, or somebody with you is sure what it is, don't eat it."
She said the giant puffball can be eaten if it is young and white inside.
"They eventually become olive brown, leathery and powdery," she said.
Sharon said she will not eat it.
"I'm sticking with what I know," she said.
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