Disciseda australis

The fruit body is a puffball, up to 3 centimetres in diameter, brown and somewhat flattened or cushion-like. Around the lower half of a freshly exposed fruit body there is an extra covering (or exoperidium), composed of fungal tissue tightly bound to and soil or sand grains but with age that soil/sand case will largely erode, leaving just a small stub at the base.

Look-alikes

There seem to be at least two other Disciseda species in Canberra. According to the literature about the Australian species, Disciseda australis is quite distinctive microscopically because of the presence of large, swollen cells in the exoperidium. There are some macroscopic differences between the three Canberra species but, until I have looked at the other unidentified Canberra specimens in the herbarium, I won’t try to give a visual guide to the species.  

Heino