The saprobic fungus has a pantropical distribution, and has been found in Africa, Asia, Australasia, and the Americas, where it grows on fertile ground and on mulch.

The fruit body, which can extend up to 15 cm (5.9 in) tall, consists of a reddish latticed head (a receptaculum) placed on top of a long stalk.

A dark olive-green spore mass, the gleba, fills the interior of the lattice and extends outwards between the arms.

The basionym for this species is Simblum periphragmoides, first described by German mycologist Johann Friedrich Klotzsch in 1831, based on specimens collected in Bois Chéry in Mauritius.

[2] In one noted example of an author being too eager to assign a new name, in 1902 George Francis Atkinson described a specimen he found in Texas, otherwise similar to Simblum but with a loose net drooping from the head; he initiated the new genus Dictybole to include his "new" species D. texense.

[3] The species was, according to mycologist Curtis Gates Lloyd, merely a decomposing or insect-damaged specimen of L. periphragmoides that had been preserved in alcohol.

Lloyd criticized Atkinson's poor judgment in his self-published journal Mycological Notes,[7] and later, humiliated him under the pen name N.J. McGinty.

In maturity, the fruit bodies, are up to 15 cm (5.9 in) tall, with a latticed spherical cap (the receptaculum) atop a long yellow or reddish stipe.

[12] The use of scanning electron microscopy has revealed that L. periphragmoides (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.

The receptacle of L. gardneri, found in southeast Asia, India, and Africa, is made of five to seven reddish-brown fingers that are initially pressed together before separating.