Photo of the week: puffballs

PACE member Martin Morozowsky of Seven Oaks Country Club (Bakersfield, CA) submitted this great sequence of photos of "popcorn like" structures that typically emerge on greens when air temperatures get high. The structures are mushrooms, or basidiocarps of a group of fungi known as puffballs, which are frequently involved in fairy ring symptoms. The most common genera involved are Bovista and Lycoperdon. Although the puffballs didn't appear to cause any direct turf damage in this particular case, they did interfere…