Puff the Magic Mushroom
Sometimes giant puffballs are found in strange circles that some people call "fairy rings." It was once thought that these patterns were created by dancing fairies, but today we know the secret lies in the main part of the fungus, the mycelium. The large white globe of the giant puffball is really just the fruiting body that carries and scatters the spores. The mycelium, a thin tangle of white threads, lives underground and extends in all directions through the soil. When the fruiting bodies develop above the soil, they form a circle. Some fairy circles can be as large as 49 feet in diameter!