The egg has a delicate, leathery outer membrane enclosing the compressed lattice that surrounds a layer of olive-green spore-bearing slime called the gleba, which contains high levels of calcium that help protect the fruit body during development.

The color of the fruit body, which can range from pink to orange to red, results primarily from the carotenoid pigments lycopene and beta-carotene.

Although considered primarily a European species, C. ruber has been introduced to other areas, and now has a wide distribution that includes all continents except Antarctica.

[4] It appeared in a woodcut in John Gerard's 1597 Great Herball,[5] shortly thereafter in Carolus Clusius' 1601 Fungorum in Pannoniis Observatorum Brevis Historia,[6] and was one of the species featured in Cassiano dal Pozzo's museo cartaceo ("paper museum") that consisted of thousands of illustrations of the natural world.

[3] The generic name Clathrus is derived from Ancient Greek κλειθρον or "lattice", and the specific epithet is Latin ruber, meaning "red".

[20] Before the volva opens, the fruiting body is egg-shaped to roughly spherical, up to 6 cm (2+1⁄4 in) in diameter, with a gelatinous interior up to 3 mm (1⁄8 in) thick.

White to grayish in color, it is initially smooth, but develops a network of polygonal marks on the surface prior to opening as the internal structures expand and stretch the peridium taut.

[21] The fruit body, or receptacle, bursts the egg open as it expands (a process that can take as little as a few hours),[6] and leaves the remains of the peridium as a cup or volva surrounding the base.

The odor—described as resembling rotting meat[25][26]—attracts flies, other insects, and, in one report, a scarab beetle (Scarabaeus sacer)[27] that help disperse the spores.

In 1862 Mordecai Cubitt Cooke wrote "it is recorded of a botanist who gathered one for the purpose of drying it for his herbarium, that he was compelled by the stench to rise during the night and cast the offender out the window".

[21] Scanning electron microscopy has revealed that C. ruber (in addition to several other Phallales species) has a hilar scar—a small indentation in the surface of the spore where it was previously connected to the basidium via the sterigma.

[33] The phylogenetically close species C. chrysomycelinus has a yellow receptacle with arms that are structurally simpler, and its gleba is concentrated on specialized "glebifers" located at the lattice intersections.

[34] Like most of the species of the order Phallales, Clathrus ruber is saprobic—a decomposer of wood and plant matter—and is commonly found fruiting in mulch beds.

[40] It now has a mainly southerly distribution in England and has been recorded from Cornwall,[41] Devon,[42] Dorset, Somerset,[21] the Isle of Wight,[43] Hampshire, Berkshire, Sussex, Surrey, and Middlesex.

[44] The fungus also occurs in the United States in urban areas of its likely introduction[23] (in California, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, Alabama, Virginia, North Carolina, and New York),[45] as well as in Canada, Mexico, and Australasia.

Dr. F. Peyre Porcher, of Charleston, South Carolina, described an account of poisoning caused by the mushroom: A young person having eaten a bit of it, after six hours suffered from a painful tension of the lower stomach, and violent convulsions.

British mycologist Donald Dring, in his 1980 monograph on the family Clathraceae, wrote that C. ruber was not regarded highly in southern European folklore.

[22] The German Mycological Society described it as "like an alien from a science fiction horror film" and named the species the 2011 "Mushroom of the Year".