Lots Of Giant Puffball Mushrooms

[Music] every one about Harrison I'm super excited right now so I'm out here hunting some mushrooms on this rainy day and I pulled into a trailhead parking pad that's where I'm standing right now as I'm sitting in my car a few minutes ago I was eating my lunch snacking on some food before I headed out and I looked across the way and I thought I saw some trash big balls of white trash you can kind of see it back there and those trees and that leaf litter and I thought that's interesting you know this is a pretty pristine area people take care of this land why would there be big balls of trash over there but I was also mildly hopeful that they are mushrooms you know when you're a mushroom hunter you think that everything is a mushroom whether it's a Gatorade bottle with golf ball or even pieces of trash and so I was like five percent hopeful that maybe it was a puffball mushroom I thought yeah it's probably not anyway I got out of my car I shut the door and my curiosity got the best of me so I decided to hop across the road and I was super stoked super excited to discover that it wasn't trash it was in fact giant mushrooms so I'm gonna take you over there I'm gonna show you what I found so you can probably understand why I thought that what I was looking at was trash kind of looks like trash I mean it's not every day that you see these giant white structures in the woods but this time of year anything goes especially after a nice rainfall and so look at this these three big giant puff balls right here so that's it the giant puff ball three perfect specimens hiding out in there but of course those aren't the only ones to more giant puff balls right here look at those ones beautiful specimens and that's not the end of it there's a nice tiny one way over there when I say tiny it's still larger than most other mushrooms that are out there it's still larger than these other like go perdón puff balls like a gem studded puff ball or the pear-shaped puff ball but those are great size specimens these are the ones that I'm really really excited about I just want to show you for size comparison how big these ones are you know ferm they are as well so look at that one listen that sound and then those two as well so I'm looking at at least six giant puff balls if not more I probably have to take a look around and see if there's any more - how about this I'm overflowing with giant puff balls right now so this is definitely in edible mushroom you can't eat this one and I'm really excited because I don't really find a lot of giant puff balls and I'm sure you find a lot of giant puff balls your neighbor finds a lot of them your friends find them I've got friends to find them too I see these occasionally but not really this size not this fresh and not this many in one general area I usually find maybe one that's a little smaller maybe he's got a lot of slug holes in it and just doesn't look too good so that's why I'm really excited to bring some of these home and see what I can cook up with them now whenever you find a giant puff ball what you want to do is cut it in half and make sure that's pure white inside if it's pure white inside then you know it's good and I put some holes in some of these and so you could tell that it's white inside but what I'm gonna do is one's rolling away from me if it doesn't roll into the street I'm gonna cut one of the smaller ones in half just so you see what it looks like because if it's darker color inside if it's yellowish if it's brownish then it's probably past its prime so I'm just gonna make a little incision this one just to see if it's good enough to eat okay so look at that pure white inside looks like a marshmallow so this is the perfect stage to harvest a giant puff ball and these are saprophytic mushrooms the genus calve Asia it's when two giant puff ball belongs to calve Asia is a saprophytic genus that decomposes plant material so usually when we think of saprophytic mushrooms we think of the ones that grow on trees and that break down trees and lignin and cellulose and all that stuff but a lot of saprophytic mushrooms including the giant puff balls inhabit the leaf litter or the grassy areas and they break down plant material there but now's definitely a good time to get out and harvest them obviously if I'm finding them here in western Pennsylvania and I'm not seeing too many other mushrooms like the maitake mushroom or hen of the woods are a lot of the heresy in the lion's mane mushrooms and so I didn't see a lot today but this one makes up for all of it so the giant puff ball got a lot of them right here maybe six of them I'm gonna keep looking see if I can find more but I do encourage you to get out there right now see if you can find any giant puff balls in your neck of the woods thanks for watching giant puff ball Adam Harriton we'll see you [Music]

Channel: Learn Your Land

Views: 119,409

Keywords: Adam Haritan, Learn Your Land, Foraging, Mushroom, Mushroom Hunting, Hunting, Venison, Fishing, Gardening, Health, Nurtition, Puffball, Giant Puffball, Calvatia, Fungi, Fungus, Paul Stamets, Western Pennsylvania, Pennsylvania, Moraine State Park, Outdoors, Hiking, Nature, Backpacking, Universe, God, Primitive Skills, Arthur Haines, Daniel Vitalis, Sam Thayer

Id: UQQ5qkvMn3s

Length: 4min 48sec (288 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 26 2017