Golovach oblong (Lycoperdon excipuliforme)
Systematics:- Department: Basidiomycota (Basidiomycetes)
- Subdivision: Agaricomycotina (Agaricomycetes)
- Class: Agaricomycetes (Agaricomycetes)
- Subclass: Agaricomycetidae (Agaricomycetes)
- Order: Agaricales (Agaric or Lamellar)
- Family: Agaricaceae (Champignon)
- Genus: Lycoperdon (Raincoat)
- Species: Lycoperdon excipuliforme (Golovach oblong (Elongated raincoat))
Synonyms:
Long raincoat
Marsupial head
The head is elongated
- Lycoperdon saccatum
- Calvatia excipuliformis
Fruit body:
Large, characteristic shape, reminiscent of a club or, less often, a pin. A hemispherical apex rests on a long pseudopod. The height of the fruiting body is 7-15 cm (under favorable conditions and more), the thickness in the thinner part is 2-4 cm, in the thicker part - up to 7 cm. (The figures are very approximate, since various sources strongly contradict each other.) Color in youthful white, then darkens to tobacco brown. The fruit body is unevenly covered with thorns of different sizes. The pulp in youth is white, elastic, then, like all raincoats, it turns yellow, becomes flabby, wadded, and then turns into a brown powder. In mature mushrooms, the upper part is usually completely destroyed, releasing spores, and the pseudopod may remain for a long time.
Spore powder:
Brown.
Spread:
It occurs in small groups and singly from the second half of summer to mid-autumn in forests of various types, in glades, forest edges.
Season:
Summer autumn.
Similar species
Given the large size and interesting shape of the fruiting body, it is rather difficult to confuse an oblong bighead with some related species. However, short-legged specimens can be confused with large prickly raincoats (Lycoperdon perlatum), but observing older specimens, you can catch a significant difference: these raincoats end their life in very different ways. In a spiny raincoat, spores are ejected from a hole in the upper part, and an oblong head, as they say, "rips off its head."
Edibility
While the flesh is white and firm, the oblong bighead is quite edible - like the rest of the raincoats, bigheads, flippers. As with other raincoats, it is necessary to remove the fibrous stem and hard exoperidium.
Remarks
The oblong golovach is an extremely effective mushroom. Perhaps the most spectacular among the raincoats. Imagine a picture: a close young spruce forest, and on the litter hefty white skittles up to twenty centimeters high stick out everywhere, sticking out and seem to glow in the twilight. Somehow it never even occurs to collect such beauty to just eat.
And when such people suddenly appear in a multitude in the middle of the former field, among small birches, bumps and ditches - everywhere! - it seems that there was some crazy "lightning", led by a military commander, obsessed with security. Because the bighead at times very much resembles a toy anti-tank grenade, and nothing can be done about it.