Day 347: The Earthballs are back. Last year, a botanical mystery erupted under the contorted filbert, one which required breaking out the microscope to examine spores. By doing so, I determined that these unusual "puffballs" were Scleroderma areolatum, a poisonous species which ejects its dark, ashy spores through a single apical pore when fully mature. The name "Scleroderma areolatum" gives hints as to the identification: "sclero-" meaning "hard," "-derma" referring to skin, and "areo-" suggesting that the surface of the species in question would be pitted or otherwise distinctly marked. (I love descriptive Latin nomenclature! "Something smithii" tells you absolutely nothing about what you should be looking for.) To the best of my knowledge, my little Scleroderma patch is the only place these grow in Pierce County, although it would be interesting to look in groves of our native filberts to see if there might be an association with Corylus and the same or other species of Scleroderma. In any event, sometimes even a walk around my yard can be exciting.
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