Bovista dermoxantha is a small, white, nearly round puffball, recognized when young by a cottony-felty outer surface that becomes inconspicuously warted, eventually leaving fine, pallid, scales on an ochre to brown endoperidium.

Both have a mycelial cord attachment to the substrate, but Bovista pila differs in releasing spores through tears or splits in the endoperidium rather than by an apical pore.

The exoperidium, which is white, felty, and shrivels in age, leaving buff to light-brown, grows up to 1.0 mm thick.

[3] There are furfuraceous scales or low warts on the endoperidium, which consists of a thin, membranous, ochre-brown to medium-brown layer, opening via a ragged apical pore.

[8] The number of fruit bodies at the turf study site in Chiba, Japan, was recorded together with average temperature at the weather station from 1999 to 2003.

Similar correlations were also found between probits obtained from daily recordings of fruit body numbers in the observation plots under 170 m2 and total effective temperature.