Donna Jean Beishline, age 13, of Allentown, PA., for her question:

What i s a puffball?

Dandelion is coined from words meaning lion’s teeth. Cornflowers grow among the corn and sunflowers turn towards the sun. Milkweed has a white, milky sap, and there is no prettier hat in the world than a Texas blue bonnet. All these plants or flowers have names which tell us something about them. The puffball also is just what it claims to be a round ball which, at certain seasons, gives off a cloudy puff.

You may come across a puffball in the woods or fields, It may be a few inches wide and pear shaped rather than round. It may be much larger, say two feet wide, and look like a boulder. The puffball, may be white, dirty grey or murky brown. At the right season it sends forth a smoky cloud of tiny, tiny spores. These powdery seedlets may be olive green, yellow or purple.

A sizable puffball may puff forth some seven thousand billion spores, all light enough to float on the breezes. But sad to say, only one little spore in a trillion is likely to land where it has a chance of growing into a new puffball This little spore that succeeds will land on rich warm soil where there is plenty of gentle moisture.

The puffball is a fungus plant, first cousin to the mushrooms and the toad stool so It is the giant of this plant group which also includes the molds and the mildews, the yeasts and the microscopic bacteria.. There are some 75,000 different fungi and all of them are plants which manage to get along without green chlorophyll. This is the green substance which most plants use to make plant food from air, water and sunlight.

Since the puffball cannot manufacture its own food, it must use prefabricated food made by other plants.

It finds this food in soil which is rich with decaying vegetation. The one in a. trillion spore lands in a field or wooded region where decaying leaves or tree trunks are near the surface    of the soil. Here it feeds and becomes a mass of thread like material which is called the mycelium.

Strange to say, the mycelium buried below the surface of the soil is actually the puffball plant. It takes in nourishment from the rich soil and grows into a matted mesh of pale threads. A t the proper time, this buried plant puts forth a fruiting body. A little white bump appears above the surface. It grows and swells into a pale round puffball. As it ripens, the puffball darkens and the inside becomes filled with countless little spores. The puffball, now a ripe fruit, needs only a gentle nudge from a person or animal. The teeming spores will then stream forth in puffs and clouds of smoky powder