hello help identify this plant its like a puff ball and puffs smoke when mashed gently found in the mountains of polk county tn looks like a grape or eye ball
My guess is that you have a species of Geastrum, earth star fungus. Basidiomycota. No doubt that our most knowledgeable fungi enthusiasts will ID these for you. (Frog, where are you?!) Welcome to the Forum!
Re: new plant- i think this is it thank you I searched for your species and found these pics. I think it's called Calostoma cinnabarina. ps this is a very nice web site with great people. this will be a favorite site to visit for a long time. already learnt a lot. thanks again.
Looks as if you have nailed the ID! Fascinating. Such incredible variety in the plant world, both flowering and non. This looked to me like an earthstar, yet not...puffball, yet not. Glad to know what it is! Thanks for posting this, and enjoy your explorations.
Lovely find! Your ID makes sense to me. I don't think we have these in B.C. - too bad I would love to see that close up. Thanks Togata for the call out :-) - We've been in the process of moving, and with the related crazy schedule, have not been able to be in the forum as much as usual lately. cheers! frog
One more thing, fungi, of course, are not plants. They don't belong to the kingdom Plantae, they belong to the separate kingdom of Fungi.
Thanks for bringing me up to date. Back in the Pliocene, when I went to school, fungi were kingdomless. Will attempt to erase the phrase 'non-flowering plant' from my brain, and perhaps also my reference books. Will leave it to you young folk to wrangle over the next kingdom-classification upheaval. Empires, kingdoms, domains? How many---4,5,6,8? In taxonomy, as in all things, the only constant is change.
