Purple-Spored Puffball (Calvatia cyathiformis)
Description:
Group of two (aged) lavender to purple, highly flattened fruit bodies with purple spores encapsulated within. It honestly looked like purple leaves or paper waste under the grass! Top is papery to velvety. Bottom tapers to a mycelial mass. Calvatia cyathiformis is a saprobic, terrestrial puffball. It is easily identified by its mature spore mass, which changes from white to purple before dispersal. It is considered a choice edible when the interior is still white.
Habitat:
Growing in grass in a public park in Northwest Georgia (Floyd County).
''Calvatia cyathiformis'', or Purple-spored Puffball, is a large edible saprobic species of ''Calvatia''. This terrestrial puffball, has purplish or purple-brown spores, which distinguish it from other large Lycoperdales. It is found mostly in prairie or grasslands of North America, Australia, and probably elsewhere.
