page_title: Calvatia craniiformis
section_title: Uses
hierarchical_section_title: Calvatia craniiformis / Uses
caption_attribution_description: English: Slices of the puffball mushroom Calvatia craniiformis. The pufbbal is edible when the internal tissue (the gleba) is still firm and white (this specimen is past its prime).
context_page_description: Calvatia craniiformis, commonly known as the brain puffball or the skull-shaped puffball, is a species of puffball fungus in the family Agaricaceae. It is found in Asia, Australia, and North America, where it grows on the ground in open woods. Its name, derived from the same Latin root as cranium, alludes to its resemblance to an animal's brain. The skull-shaped fruit body is 8–20 cm broad by 6–20 cm tall and white to tan. Initially smooth, the skin develops wrinkles and folds as it matures, cracking and flaking with age. The peridium eventually sloughs away, exposing a powdery yellow-brown to greenish-yellow spore mass. The puffball is edible when the gleba is still white and firm, before it matures to become yellow-brown and powdery. Mature specimens have been used in the traditional or folk medicines of China, Japan, and the Ojibwe as a hemostatic or wound dressing agent. Several bioactive compounds have been isolated and identified from the brain puffball.
context_section_description: Calvatia craniiformis is an edible species. Young puffballs with a firm, white gleba have a mild odor and pleasant taste. Early 20th-century mycologist Charles McIlvaine noted over a century ago that "the slightest change to yellow makes it bitter." Versatile in cooking, the puffball absorbs flavors well.
  In the United States, the Ojibwe used the powdery gleba as a hemostatic agent to staunch the flow of nosebleeds: the spore powder was inhaled through the nostrils. It is now known that this practice can lead to the pulmonary disease lycoperdonosis, which causes symptoms similar to pneumonia. It is also used as a hemostatic agent in Chinese and Japanese folk medicines.
caption: Calvatia craniiformis is edible when the gleba is firm and white, unlike the pictured specimen.
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