Many-rooted earthball or Collared earthstar

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.

A young mushroom is a round or egg-shaped fruiting body 2-5 cm across, firm, creamy white or ocher-cream, sunk in the litter. When mature, the outer skin splits from the top into 4-8 petal-like rays and folds back, forming a star 5-12 cm across. The rays are fleshy, spread out in damp weather and curling inward in dry weather. In the center is a round spore sac 1-3 cm across, smooth, grayish brown or chocolate gray, with a small round pore on top for releasing spores.

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.

The hymenophore is enclosed inside the spore sac (a gasteromycete). At first the flesh is white, soft. With age it turns grayish brown and becomes a powdery mass of spores. When mature, the spores escape through an apical pore — in the rain, drops hit the sac and puff out a cloud of spores.

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

There is no stem in the usual sense. In the "star" part, the fleshy middle layer forms a distinctive collar or cup around the base of the spore sac. This collar is the diagnostic feature of G. triplex that sets it apart from other earthstars.

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.

In a young fruiting body it is white, soft, with a layered structure. With age it shrinks, darkens and turns into a powdery mass of spores. It doesn't change color quickly when cut.

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

Faint, earthy, neutral. Not pronounced. The taste isn't tested — the mushroom is not edible.