Puffballs

Apart from being edible — and delicious at that — dried spores were used as diaper rash “talcum powder” by the First Nations of BC. Spores were also found to staunch bloodflow when placed on a wound. At one time the brownish spores were used as a photographic flash powder. A large puffball can contain as many as 7500 billion spores. If each of these spores were to grow to maturity the next generation would form a fungus colony some 800 times the size of the earth.

Illustration by Manami Kimura

Exploring Southwestern British Columbia without a Car