Paul and a Puffball

Puffball mushrooms have been long used by indigenous peoples of the Americas and Europe as a styptic and wound healing agent. They are excellent in stopping bleeding from a wound and also accelerate healing. . An excellent article summarizing some of the indigenous use of mushrooms can be found in “Puffball usages among North American Indians” in the Journal of Ethnobiology 3(1):55-62, May 1983. The Blackfoot clan reportedly painted circles of puffballs on the base of their teepees to signify the importance of these mushrooms (‘fallen stars’) for wound healing and for fire starting. . Surgeons in Europe during the 1800’s would use puffballs to stop bleeding and for healing wounds. That two cultures from different continents would use these mushrooms for the same purposes either speaks to a co-incidence of discoveries, or I suspect is more related to a common survival skill humans discovered tens of thousands of years ago. Many puffballs hold these properties, but especially Calvatia and Lycoperdons. They can become quite large, like Calvatia gigantea and Calvatia booniana. . Nevertheless, indigenous First Nations of North America took the use of puffballs to a much more sophisticated and symbolic level, IMO. . The take home message: Mushrooms unify people across the planet. With mushrooms, we are ONE PEOPLE.