English: Smooth puffball; Soft puffball.
German: Stinkender Stäubling.
Region: Europe, North Amrica.
Habitat: along trails, open areas, in hardwood-evergreen woods; coastal to low and mid-elevations.
Use: edible when the internal flesh is still white.
MycologyType: solitary or in small groups; fruiting from late fall to mid-winter; occasional.
Fruiting body: sporocarp; 2 to 8 cm tall, 2 to 7 m broad; pyriform to turbinate; with a well developed pseudostipe, pleated at the base; attached to the substrate with thin rhizoids; exoperidium cream to pale-buff, maturing tan, greyish-brown to medium-brown, covered with a mixture of granules and short spines, the latter solitary or grouped with fused tips; exoperdium persistent overlying a papery, buff to pale-tan endoperidum; gleba white, becoming yellowish-green, maturing dark-brown, elastic; subgleba alveolate, dark olive-brown with lilac tints, taking up approximately half of the fruiting body; sporocarp dehiscing via a late-fo to 5 µm, including ornamentation; round to subglobose; distinctly warted; with a central oil droplet; pedicel nub-like, < 0.5 µm in length; sterigmal remnants common in mounts; capillitial pores abundant, relatively small, round to oval; spores medium-brown in deposit.