The hunt for the missing puffball

Ok, not actually missing, except in the sense that it is not recorded anywhere except by me ... so maybe I am imagining it, or maybe I am spreading it, so it is only showing up in places that I visit :-)

The story so far ... a long long time ago in a land closeby I found an interesting puffball growing, in what I thought was moss, on a mahoe tree trunk.

The mature puffball



No one seemed to know exactly what it was, but they grew on the same tree every year from 2006 to 2014, so I thought they weren't rare and someone would eventually tell me what it was. I stopped finding it there but found another location in 2014. Still no hints as to its identify, wondered whether it was an introduced/invasive species as it seemed not to correspond to any described NZ species. Sent some material to Jerry Cooper at landcare research.

And that's when things became even more interesting! Jerry sequenced the DNA and found that it was not what he expected - /observations/4727831. "This puffball is different, worthy of another genus name. It needs more work but the data hint at it being more closely related to the ancestor of all puffballs globally than any of the currently recognised genera"

And he pointed out that it was growing with a liverwort not a moss (you can tell that I am not a botanist), and it was probably parasitic on the liverwort. (Some sites do have moss, but there has always been liverwort)

The liverwort associated with this puffball

Dying liverwort around puffball



Since then I have found it on a total of 12 different trees, all with liverwort present (some with moss too), always on live trees, and not on bare wood. And all the trees have been mahoe (Melicytus ramiflorus). Usually I have only found isolated trees with it, but there is one place with sites on 5 trees within 20 to 30 meters of each other. I have not located any at the original site for 4 years now.
The complete set of posted observations can be found here: /observations?field:Observation group=963144

Puffball with scale, and range of sizes



My search for it has not been rigorous at all, I do tend to examine trees with a good covering of liverwort more carefully than others. But I have only identified the trees after I have found the puffball, so that the bias towards mahoe is strange as the liverwort seems to grow much more widely than that. And I don't get out beyond Wellington often, so although I look for it everywhere that I go, I've only found it in Wellington around Wrights Hill, and at only what I'd call 8 sites , in 12 years (although 7 of those sites are currently active).

It is small and easy to overlook, but on the plus side it is slow growing and present for many months before maturing and expelling its spores. Often last years empty puffball shells can still be identified when the next seasons ones are growing.

This seasons mature puffballs together with the remains of last year's puffballs



So the question of all those interested in liverworts is : "Is this puffball ubiquitous and found everywhere that the liverwort Metzgeria furcata grows but overlooked, or is this a remnant population that occurs nowhere else? Or something in between?". Well lots of people are interested in liverworts and have made many observations of them, so what better place to start. Have you every noticed inconspicuous round white puffballs, or slightly larger (<10mm) mature brown, egg shaped, puffballs growing on live tree trunks with liverworts?

Follow up

A few developments:
In October 2019 Jerry Cooper informed us that he has identified this species in material brought back from Raoul Island by @la-c (https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/4727831#activity_comment_3547937), and designated it as a new species, tagged as Lycoperdon sp. 'Croydon (PDD106681). https://scd.landcareresearch.co.nz/specimen/PDD_117938

In May 2020 @wild_wind, by dint of a lot of searching with sharp eyes, is the first person to report finding this new species at a new location while actually searching for it, /observations/45041593 (no confirming DNA analysis done though). So now on two different hills in Wellington and on Raoul Island! Presumably in many locations between. It will be interesting to see whether it turns up in the South Island.

Growth sequence
Up until now I have not really observed the progress of a single puffball to gauge how fast they grow. The ones I monitored previously didn't grow appreciably.

But this series of recent observations Observation group=50648131, from 12/11/2019 to 23/6/2020 seems to show the growth of one to 'full size'. So this confirms that not only do they take a long time to mature, they can take a long time to reach their final 'full size'. It will be interesting to see how long this one takes to mature now that it has reached that size.

This starts off as a bunch of small puffballs just below a previous observation of a cut puffball (Similar observation set=32884523). There seems to be something eating the puffballs, but one grows despite this. It will be interesting to see whether this damage affects its ability to produce spores.

It is also interesting to note an elongated intermediate form of the puffball:

a form that I have only seen once before:

We need more observations to confirm whether this is a normal intermediate stage as they grow.

Update

We have reached the mainland https://inaturalist.nz/observations/196883811, located by Tyler McBeth, 17/1/2024. !!!

Posted on September 15, 2018 10:45 AM by tony_wills