Common puffball or Many-rooted earthball

The fruiting body is inverted pear-shaped or club-shaped, 2-6 cm tall, 1.5-4 cm wide at the top. The upper (fertile) part is a rounded head; the lower (sterile) part is a narrowed “stalk” 1-3 cm long. Color: young ones are white or cream; with age yellowish grey to brown. A telltale feature — the surface is covered in coarse spiny warts (1-2 mm) that gradually fall off, leaving a net-like trace.

Fruiting body 3-10 cm across, round to flattened-round, with no distinct stem. The skin is thick (3-5 mm), leathery and tough, colored yellow-brown, ocher-brown, with a fine felty-fibrous surface. As it matures it splits open into 4-6 radiating lobes like a star, revealing the dark spore mass inside. Once open, the star shape stays on the ground.

Internal hymenophore (gleba). The young gleba is white, dense and uniform. With age it turns yellow, then green, and becomes a dark olive-grey powdery spore mass. At the top of a mature fruiting body an opening forms, through which the spores puff out when a raindrop hits (hence the Ukrainian name, “rain mushroom”). Spore print dark olive-brown.

The spores form inside the fruiting body, in the gleba. In young specimens the gleba is whitish at first, very quickly (within a day or two) turning bluish-gray-purple, and in mature ones completely purplish-black and powdery. The spore print is dark purplish-black.

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

No stem. The fruiting body is attached to the substrate by short, threadlike rhizomorphs (coarse whitish strands of mycelium).

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

Flesh (gleba) whitish in young specimens, but very quickly turns bluish to gray-purple; purplish-black and powdery in mature ones. The dark bluish color of the young flesh is a diagnostic feature of earthballs. The outer skin is dense and leathery, and noticeably resists the knife.

Faint, pleasant mushroomy smell with no sharp notes. Taste mild and neutral — it takes on the flavors of the dish.

Faint, neutral, or with a rubbery/rotten note in mature specimens. Not pleasantly mushroomy.