Bovista pila
| Bovista pila | |
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Basidiomycota |
| Class: | Agaricomycetes |
| Order: | Agaricales |
| Family: | Agaricaceae |
| Genus: | Bovista |
| Species: |
Bovista pila Berk. & M.A.Curtis (1873) |
| Synonyms | |
Bovista pila, commonly known as the tumbling puffball, is a species of puffball fungus in the family Agaricaceae. A temperate species, it is widely distributed in North America, where it grows on the ground on road sides, in pastures, grassy areas, and open woods. There are few well-documented occurrences of B. pila outside North America. B. pila closely resembles the European B. nigrescens, from which it can be reliably distinguished only by microscopic characteristics.
The egg-shaped to spherical puffball of B. pila measures up to 8 cm (3 in) in diameter. Its white outer skin flakes off in age to reveal a shiny, bronze-colored inner skin that encloses a spore sac. The spores are more or less spherical, with short tube-like extensions. The puffballs are initially attached to the ground by a small cord that readily breaks off, leaving the mature puffball to be blown about. Young puffballs are edible while their internal tissue is still white and firm. B. pila puffballs have been used by the Chippewa people of North America as a charm, and as an ethnoveterinary medicine for livestock farming in western Canada.
The species was described as new to science in 1873 by Miles Joseph Berkeley and Moses Ashley Curtis, from specimens collected in Wisconsin. In their short description, they emphasize the short pedicels (tube-like extensions) on the spores, and indicate that these pedicels—initially about as long as the spore is wide—soon break off. According to the nomenclatural authority MycoBank,taxonomic synonyms (i.e., having different type specimens) include Pier Andrea Saccardo's 1882 Bovista tabacina, Job Bicknell Ellis and Benjamin Matlack Everhart's 1885 Mycenastrum oregonense, and Andrew Price Morgan's 1892 Bovista montana. William Chambers Coker and John Nathaniel Couch called B. pila "the American representative of B. nigrescens in Europe", referring to their close resemblance.
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