Calvatia craniiformis
| Calvatia craniiformis | |
|---|---|
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| Scientific classification | |
| Kingdom: | Fungi |
| Division: | Basidiomycota |
| Class: | Agaricomycetes |
| Order: | Agaricales |
| Family: | Agaricaceae |
| Genus: | Calvatia |
| Species: | C. craniiformis |
| Binomial name | |
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Calvatia craniiformis (Schwein.) Fr. ex De Toni (1888) |
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| Synonyms | |
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Bovista craniiformis Schwein. (1832) |
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Bovista craniiformis Schwein. (1832)
Calvatia craniiformis (Schwein.) Fr. (1849)
Calvatia craniformis (orthographic variant)
Calvatia craniiformis, commonly known as the brain puffball or the skull-shaped puffball, is a species of puffball fungus in the family Agaricaceae. It is found in Asia, Australia, and North America, where it grows on the ground in open woods. Its name, derived from the same Latin root as cranium, alludes to its resemblance to an animal's brain. The skull-shaped fruit body is 8–20 cm (3–8 in) broad by 6–20 cm (2–8 in) tall and white to tan. Initially smooth, the skin (peridium) develops wrinkles and folds as it matures, cracking and flaking with age. The peridium eventually sloughs away, exposing a powdery yellow-brown to greenish-yellow spore mass (the gleba). The puffball is edible when the gleba is still white and firm, before it matures to become yellow-brown and powdery. Mature specimens have been used in the traditional or folk medicines of China, Japan, and the Ojibwe as a hemostatic or wound dressing agent. Several bioactive compounds have been isolated and identified from the brain puffball.
The species was first described as Bovista craniiformis by Lewis David de Schweinitz in 1832.Elias Fries transferred it to the then newly circumscribed genus Calvatia in 1849, setting Calvatia craniiformis as the type and only species. Scott Bates and colleagues suggest that the name is synonymous with Lycoperdon delicatum published by Miles Joseph Berkeley and Moses Ashley Curtis in 1873 (not the L. delicatum published by Berkeley in 1854), as is Lycoperdon missouriense published by William Trelease in 1891. The form C. craniiformis f. gardneri, published by Yosio Kobayasi in 1932 (originally Lycoperdon gardneri Berk. 1875), since been elevated to the distinct species Calvatia gardneri.
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