This article is provided as a public service by the Geophysical Institute, University of Alaska Fairbanks, in cooperation with the UAF research community. Carla Helfferich is a science writer at the Institute. Summer 1992 is a good one for mushrooms in this part of Alaska's interior. Boletus of several kinds line local dirt roads, going from small and succulent to enormous and wormy apparently overnight.
Puffballs erupt in the unshorn edges of lawns.
Fly agarics, the toxic, big red amanitas with white freckles, reach Frisbee size at the verge of woodlots. Mushroom hunters, whether searching for food or photographic subjects, are doing well hereabouts. Improbable as it seems, some mushrooms are hunters. They are active predators with an array of weapons weird enough to suit a science fiction writer's nightmares. The lowly, but edible, puffball is one of the predatory kinds.