Fruit body: apothecia developes underground, as a hollow, smooth, white ball which opens on a top as star, moving away supstrate and thus showing purple hymenium. Mature specimens can be up to 18 cm in diameter.

Microscopy: spores ellipsoid with blunt ends, hyaline, with two oil droplets, 13-15x7-8 μm. Asci tips turn blue with iodine; paraphyses septate, often once or twice branched.

Flesh: whitish, fragile, often containing fragments of supstrate, without special smell.

Habitat: season spring, in woods on calcareous terrains.

Edibility: not advised for consumption; raw poisonous.

Reference: Uzelac, B. (2009). Gljive Srbije i zapadnog Balkana, BGV Logik, Beograd.

Photo: Boris Assyov