Common puffball or Dog stinkhorn

The fruiting body is shaped like an upside-down pear or a club, 2-6 cm tall and 1.5-4 cm wide at the top. The upper (fertile) part is a rounded head; the lower (sterile) part is a narrower “stalk” 1-3 cm long. Young ones are white or cream, turning yellowish grey to brown with age. The telltale feature is the covering of coarse spiny warts (1-2 mm), which gradually fall off and leave a net-like pattern.

There's no separate cap. The top of the stem is pointed, orange-red and finely bumpy, and only the tip is covered in sticky, shiny dark olive slime that carries the spores. Once flies have eaten it, the tip shows bright orange.

Inside is the gleba, the spore-producing tissue. When young it's white, dense and uniform; with age it turns yellow, then green, and finally becomes a dark olive-grey powdery spore mass. A mature puffball opens a hole at the top, and the spores puff out when a raindrop hits it (hence the Ukrainian name, “rain mushroom”). Spore print dark olive-brown.

There are no gills or pores: the spores are carried in the olive slime at the tip. There's no ordinary spore print; the spores are pale yellow in mass.

There's no separate stem: the fruiting body is all one piece. The lower, sterile part forms a “stalk-base” 1-3 cm tall, somewhat narrower than the top, white and scaly, which passes into whitish rhizomorphs (mycelial cords) in the soil.

The stem is 6 to 15 cm tall and about 1 cm thick, cylindrical, hollow, spongy and pitted like expanded polystyrene, white, pale yellow or pale orange, often curved and fragile.

At the base the remains of the egg form a white sac (volva) with white mycelial cords. The young fungus looks like a white or yellowish egg 2 to 3 cm across, half buried in leaf litter.

The flesh of young ones is pure white, uniform and dense, with a delicate, pleasant flavour. With age it turns yellow, then green, and becomes a spore mass. The test is to cut it open: uniform white means it's good to eat; any other colour, throw it out.

The stem walls are spongy like polystyrene, whitish to pale orange. Inside the egg, a layer of clear jelly lies under the skin.

A faint, pleasant mushroomy smell with no sharp notes. The taste is mild and neutral; it takes on the flavours of the dish.

The smell is unpleasant and carrion-like, but much weaker than the common stinkhorn's.