Giant Puffball

Safety first. A giant puffball is a good food only while it is young and pure white all the way through when cut from top to bottom. Missouri's conservation agency warns that some white mushrooms, including the deadly destroying angel (Amanita bisporigera), pass through stages that can be mistaken for a puffball. [1] A young Amanita "button" can hide a tiny cap and stem inside an egg-shaped body, and only cutting the mushroom open shows them. Do not identify wild fungi from text or an app: have an experienced local expert confirm every find in person. [1][2]

The short version. Giant puffball is a very large, round, white wild mushroom that is sliced and fried or baked like a thick steak. It is a food, not a proven medicine. Older reports of an anticancer substance called calvacin, a few cell-dish findings and some recent mouse and rat studies exist, but we found no trial in people. [3][4][5][6][9]

Two separate questions. Eating the mushroom is one question (what it is, how to cook it safely, allergy). Taking an extract or powder as a supplement is another, and for giant puffball there is almost no supplement market and no human evidence.

What it is

Calvatia gigantea (Batsch) Lloyd, also written Langermannia gigantea, is a puffball that grows in grass, fields and woodland edges. [1][2] Fruiting bodies range from golf-ball size to watermelon size, and a large one is nearly two feet long. [2] A big specimen can hold roughly seven trillion spores, each only a few thousandths of a millimetre across. [2] When the inside ages it turns yellowish green and then brown, which means it is past eating. [1]

The white-inside rule and the look-alikes

• Cut it open, top to bottom, every time. The inside of an edible young puffball is uniformly white and smooth, like marshmallow, with no outline of a cap, stem or gills. [1] This one check is not enough on its own: poisonous earthballs and young Amanita can fool people who rely on a single test, and an experienced person should always confirm in person. See the common earthball and destroying angel safety pages.
• Do not eat any with a brown, black, purple or yellow interior. [2]
• Young Amanita mushrooms (the deadly destroying angel is named by Missouri's agency) can look like a small puffball when closed. [1] This is the reason giant puffballs of small size, or any specimen that you have not cut open, are the risk.
• Other puffball-type fungi with a firm or coloured inside are not the same thing. Our sources name the destroying angel only; we did not read a source that lists every look-alike, so do not treat the list here as complete.
• If someone has eaten a wild mushroom and feels ill, call poison help straight away (United States: 1-800-222-1222). See poisoning symptoms and urgent help.

Cooking and eating safely

• Missouri's agency advises peeling the tough outer skin, cooking the mushroom thoroughly, eating only a small amount the first time because some people react to certain fungi, and avoiding puffballs from lawns treated with chemicals. [1]
• It spoils quickly after picking, so it is eaten soon. [2]
• The flavour is described as mild and takes on the taste of what it is cooked with; the usual way is frying in batter. [2]
• See cooking edible mushrooms safely.

Food and nutrition

One laboratory study from Turkey reported that wild fruiting bodies are about 34% protein and 52% carbohydrate, with trehalose (a sugar) as one of the main compounds. [7] Another counted about 200 mg of free amino acids per 100 g. [8] These come from abstracts we could read, not from the full papers, and USDA FoodData Central has no entry for this mushroom. Nothing here shows a nutrient role for people eating a normal portion. [7][8]

Calvacin and the older anticancer story

In the 1960s researchers isolated calvacin from Calvatia and reported that it slowed a sarcoma (a tumour type) in laboratory mice; a university herbarium page still describes it as one of the first antitumour substances taken from a mushroom. [2] Two original papers are in the medical literature (a 1960 report in Science and a 1963 toxicology report in Cancer Research); we saw only their titles and author lists, not the text. [9] A 2026 review describes calvacin as a basic mucoprotein of about 17 kDa that reduced the growth of human stomach-cancer cells in a dish (half-maximal concentration about 28 to 30 micrograms per millilitre) and reports no animal data for it. [3] Calvacin was never established as a treatment in people, and we found no human trial.

What research shows

• Cell dishes. A methanol extract of the fruiting body slowed lung-cancer (A549) cells with a half-maximal concentration of 500 micrograms per millilitre after 72 hours, and changed genes linked to cell death. [6] That is a high concentration and a cell-dish result only.
• Mice. A polysaccharide from the mushroom was reported to inhibit sarcoma S180 growth by 48.4% at 200 mg per kg a day, as quoted by a review. [3] An extract put on wounds of diabetic mice sped healing and lowered two inflammation signals. [5]
• Rats. A methanol extract of fruiting bodies collected in Nigeria lowered blood glucose in 36 alloxan-diabetic and normal male rats (400 mg per kg lowered it by about 29%), and in a test tube it blocked the sugar-digesting enzyme alpha-amylase. [4] Groups had six animals, the authors' tables and text disagree in places, and nobody has tested this in people. [4]
• Reviews. A 2024 review lists antioxidant, anticancer, antimicrobial, antidiabetic and wound-healing activity, linked to polysaccharides and fatty acids. [11] That paper is behind a paywall; we read only its abstract.
• People. We found no randomised or other human trial of giant puffball for any health purpose. Proper evidence not found.

Traditional use

In traditional Chinese medicine, puffball material called ma bo (the Chinese Pharmacopoeia lists Lasiosphaera fenzlii, Calvatia gigantea and Calvatia lilacina) is used to clear heat, stop bleeding and soothe the throat and cough. [3] In Mongolian medicine powder is put on ulcers and bleeding wounds. [3] A herbarium page also mentions spores used on wounds. [2] These are traditional uses, not evidence that they work.

Lab data and chemistry

A. What the laboratory literature reports in this mushroom. Wikidata (the open knowledge base that imports the LOTUS natural-products data) has a record for Calvatia gigantea (Q222449) but lists no compounds found in it, so we cannot offer a LOTUS table. [12] The groups below come from papers and a review we read; each is "reported in at least one study", not "in every specimen". Compound identifiers (ChEBI, Wikidata) were not looked up for these groups.

B. Measured values. USDA FoodData Central has no giant puffball entry (checked against our USDA file). All values below are from papers or reviews, not from our own measurement, and only two are from an abstract of a primary paper.

C. What the numbers do and do not mean.

• Values vary by site, soil, age at picking and drying, and the Turkish figures come from abstracts, so basis (fresh or dry) is unknown.


• A compound found in a mushroom does not show a health effect; the cell and animal results above used concentrated extracts.


• The element figures in the review mix species, so use them only as a hint that puffballs take up metals.


• Cell-dish concentrations of hundreds of micrograms per millilitre are far from what a person could reach by eating a slice.


• This is a wild food: no fruiting-body versus mycelium comparison exists, and we found no mycelium-on-grain supplement data.

Related pages

• Morel
• Chanterelle
• Cooking edible mushrooms safely
• Mushroom heavy metals and contamination
• Mushroom poisoning symptoms and urgent help