Summary:
Features include 1) a fruitbody that is nearly spherical to pear-shaped, coated with short purplish brown to reddish brown to cinnamon buff spines over a pale pinkish brown ground color, 2) an inner layer pitted after the spines fall off, 3) a spore mass that is white at first, then purplish brown and powdery, 4) sterile base small or absent, 5) growth on decaying, mossy, hardwood logs and stumps, and 6) round weakly spiny to smooth spores.

Microscopic:
spores 3.5-4 x 3.5-4 microns, round, weakly echinulate [spiny] to smooth, brownish, (Bessette), spores 4-5 x 4-5 microns, round with a minute pedicel, rough at 440x, small spines at 950x with spines projecting into a thin, colorless envelope that surrounds the spores, spores light yellowish brown; capillitium 3.5-6.5 microns wide, colorless or nearly so, "septate, rarely branched, walls variable in thickness, usually thin, often encrusted, irregular thickenings along the sides", (Bowerman)

Notes:
Lycoperdon subincarnatum was reported from BC according to Redhead(5), but the source was not given. There is a BC collection at Pacific Forestry Centre from 1962 determined by J.W. Groves. Schalkwijk-Barendsen lists it for PQ, AB, and the US. Arora says it is found "mainly in eastern North America". The New York Botanical Garden has collections from PQ, MA, ME, MI, NH, PA, and VT, (NYBG).

EDIBILITY

unknown (Bessette)

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Stereum diaphanum (Schwein.) Cooke in Sacc.
Thelephora diaphana Schwein. in Berk. & M.A.