A stalked puffball of dry, sandy ground: a rusty-brown spore sac sits atop a tall, woody, shaggy-scaled stalk that rises from a membranous volva. It is rare across most of its scattered worldwide range and legally protected in the United Kingdom and Hungary. The desert form described as Battarrea stevenii is now generally treated as the same species.
Inedible: woody and tough. The immature egg stage is reportedly eaten in Cyprus, but the species is rare and protected in parts of its range and should not be collected.
Help build this page
This page grows with the community. Here is what it is still missing:
Photos. None yet — moderators review each photo before it appears.Sign in to add a photo
Sightings. Spotted it in the wild? Add it to the map.Open the map
Strains. No public strains of this species on WeMush yet.
Track Your Own Scaly-stalked Puffball Grows
Join WeMush to log cultivation data, discover strains, and connect with fellow growers.
Never eat a wild mushroom based on a web page — confirm with an expert.
Habitat
Solitary to scattered in dry, sandy soils: coastal back dunes, deserts, sagebrush and other arid or semiarid sites, hedgebanks, and under trees and shrubs (in California often under Monterey cypress and Eucalyptus). Presumably saprobic.
Distribution
Widely scattered but rare: western North America (mainly arid regions and the West Coast), Mexico, Hawaii, South America (Brazil), Europe (including Britain, Belgium, Hungary, North Macedonia), North Africa (Morocco), Asia (China), Australia and New Zealand.
Characteristics
Fruitbody: begins as a partly buried whitish 'egg'. Spore sac: about 2.5-5 cm broad, convex, its whitish membrane splitting around the margin to expose a rusty-brown, powdery spore mass. Stalk: 7-40 cm tall, 0.5-1.5 cm thick, tough and woody, with fibrous rusty-brown scales. Volva: membranous, at the base, shriveling with age. Spore print: rusty brown. Spores: globose, finely warted; reported as 4.5-8 µm across (MushroomExpert). Capillitium: includes elaters with spiral thickenings.
