Disciseda candida

The fruit body is a puffball. Usually when seen it consists of a spore sac (with an apical mouth)  and with at least some of its lower half covered by a grainy case (or exoperidium). The exoperidium is composed of soil or sand grains, glued together by fungal hyphae and covers about half of a fairly new fruit body but with age erosion reduces the exoperidium to just a small basal patch. The spore sac is up to 3 centimetres in breadth but usually only about half as tall as wide, hence somewhat cushion-like in shape. The spore sac’s skin (or endoperidium) may be whitish, greyish or some shade of brown and it has a somewhat reticulate pattern on its lower part, composed of tufts of hyphae.

Warning: If much of the endoperidium is still present, it will hide the reticulation.

This is a cosmopolitan species, found in a wide variety of grassy habitats.

This is one of the Disciseda species that starts ‘upside down’ (see http://canberra.naturemapr.org/Community/Species/22438)

The gelatinous layer

The literature reports a ‘gelatinous’, ‘spongy’ or ‘watery translucent’ layer between endoperidium and exoperidium in American and Australian specimens of Disciseda candidia, but absent from European specimens (but one paper says not all American specimens have that layer).

Look-alikes

Disciseda species can be macroscopically similar (especially weathered specimens of different species) and identification often requires a look at the microscopic features. Disciseda candida is the only species for which that basal reticulation has been reported.