TEST

Since nothing overly exciting is happening in deciduous woods I visited one of the young spruce grows. Later in the season this is the place to find some Lactarius species, blewits and puffballs. This time I found really beautiful specimens of earthstars ( Geastrum saccatum ) in different stages of development. This is not something I find regularly, so I thought it is wort mentioning. All the earthstars and bird nests mushrooms belong to puffball family and are quite widespread in Ontario, but not that common. I usually encounter them while visiting North York Regional Forest or Durham Regional Forest.

On Labor Day Monday I decided to venture to Cambridge Area (some 50km from my home).  In the old oak woods I found Giant Puffballs (Calvatia gigantea) . This mushrooms shows up at the end of the summer in various spots - meadows, woods, shrubs etc. It is quite common find and nothing unusual. But this time there was more than 20 giants in less than 100m². They did not form any noticeable fairy ring (I did find them before in partial fairy rings) but were scattered around like some toys on the playground. Furthermore, there was very little damage on the bodies, and that is quite unusual. Despite fairly dry conditions none of them was cracked and discolored. [caption id="attachment_2555" align="alignnone" width="663"] Beautiful Giant Puffball specimen[/caption] Here is the picture with my Blackberry Z10 for the scale (Z10 is approximately 14cmX7cm): [caption id="attachment_2557" align="alignnone" width="663"] Z10 for a Scale[/...