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The Giant Puffball
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There's a mushroom in Massachusetts the size of a soccer ball. And it can grow that big in about a week.
This fall, people found them in Boston, Lexington, and Nahant.
It's the giant puffball. One big one holds about 7 trillion spores.
That's more than all the stars in our galaxy.
When it's ripe, it turns brown and cracks open. Then raindrops splash the spores out like smoke.
Out of trillions, almost none ever sprout.
Three times, a bill tried to make it the official state mushroom. It never passed.
Leave it where it grows.
Never eat a wild mushroom unless an expert has checked it. Young deadly Amanitas can look like puffballs.
Data: Royal Botanic Gardens Kew, A. H. R. Buller (1909), iNaturalist, and the Massachusetts Legislature.