Apioperdon pyriforme (Schaeff.) Vizzini
Phytotaxa 299(1): 81. 2017.
Common Name: pear-shaped puffball
Synonyms: Lycoperdon pyriforme Schaeff.: Pers.; Morganella pyriformis (Schaeff.: Pers.) Kreisel & D. Krüger
Fruiting body up to 5.5 cm tall, 3.5 cm broad, pyriform to subglobose, usually with a well-developed, pleated sterile base and conspicuous white rhizomorphs; exoperidium when young, cream, pale-tan to ochre-brown, the surface spinulose to minutely warted, (nearly smooth to the unaided eye); with age and exposure, often medium-brown to dark-reddish-brown, the ornamentation then granulose to slightly areolate; exoperidium persistent until senescence; endoperidium membranous, glabrous, pale-tan to ochre-brown; gleba at first white, soft, yellowish to yellowish-olive, at maturity olive-brown; fruiting body dehiscing via a late-forming apical pore; subgleba white, finely-textured, unchanging; odor and taste strongly fungal.
Spores 3.5-4.5 µm, globose, smooth, moderately thick-walled, with a central oil droplet, pedicel absent; capillitium lacking pits; spores medium-brown in deposit.
Scattered to clustered on well-rotted stumps and woody debris, e.g. wood chips; also on lignin-rich soils; fruiting from after the fall rains to mid-winter; widely distributed and common in most years.
Edible when immature and the gleba still white.
Apioperdon pyriforme is a new name for what has been known as Lycoperdon pyriforme, a puffball familiar to mushroom hunters for its tendency to fruit in dense clusters on lignicolous substrates. The name change stems from a 2017 DNA study that indicates, that despite appearances, Lycoperdon pyriforme does not belong in Lycoperdon. Interestingly, the study confirms what many mycologists have long suspected, that Lycoperdon pyriforme is an outlier in the genus because of its lignicolous habit plus micromorphological differences such as smooth rather than typically ornamented spores, a capillitium that lacks pores, a dense, white cellular rather than loculate subgleba, and conspicuous basal white rhizomorphs. These differences aside, Apioperdon pyriforme does resembles several Lycoperdon species, and should be compared carefully when fruiting in lignin rich soils. These species include Lycoperdon perlatum, L. umbrinum, and L. molle. Lycoperdon perlatum sometimes fruits in clusters, but the exoperidium has conical spines, which when shed, leave circular scars on the endoperium; Lycoperdon umbrinum is a sooty-brown, finely ornamented puffball that fruits solitary to scattered, with a loculate, grey-brown subgleba; Lycoperdon molle is dull brown puffball that also fruits scattered or in small groups, has a loculate subgleba, its most distinctive character, coarsely warted spores. None of these have the thick, white rhizomorphs characteristic of Apioperdon pyriforme.
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— older sporocarps
