Poof!

Some mushrooms are colorful. Some have weird shapes. And some go poof!

The purpose of mushrooms is to disperse fungal spores. Different species accomplish this in different ways.

Mushrooms with the standard 'mushroom' shape typically let their spores rain gently down from the undersides of their caps. The spores are so tiny, they can waft away on the lightest breeze.

Side note: you can take a fresh mushroom cap off its stalk (technically called a 'stipe', from the Latin word for tree trunk), place it on a piece of paper, cover it with a cup, and leave it overnight. Why would you do such a thing? Because in the morning you may find a pretty pattern of spores that have rained down on the paper. This is called a spore print, and they're useful for identifying different fungal species. Many spores are white, so the best results may come from a piece of colored paper.

Various species of cup fungi use air to disperse their spores in a far more active way. Cup fungi have a problem. They're cup-shaped, and they sit on the ground. How can they get their spores up and out of the cup? A breeze will do nicely. But, there's no point in releasing your spores if it's calm. The spores will just sit in your cup, and perhaps get eaten by small invertebrates.

The solution? Cup fungi can actually sense the wind. And when they do, they forcefully poof a bunch of spores out all at once.

Here are some examples I filmed yesterday, with my breath standing in for a gust of wind. These are probably Common Brown Cups (Phylloscypha phyllogena).

This is a surprisingly active response from an organism that otherwise doesn't seem to do much of anything (at least on our timescale).

Give it a try yourself! There are a variety of cup fungi around right now. I've seen brown ones, orange ones, and red ones. They tend to be small - a couple inches wide or less. They may grow singly, or in clusters. Kneel down a foot or so away, and blow a short, sharp burst of air into the cups - as you might do if you were trying to blow debris out of them. If you're lucky, you'll get a noticeable response in a second or two.

It won't always work. The cups have to be fresh, and the weather needs to be dry and calm. But if you catch the cups just right, they'll respond with a poof!