Taxa, which include species commonly known as the ‘hard-skinned puffballs’, ‘earthballs’, or 'earthstars', are widespread in both temperate and tropical regions.

[1] The best known members include the earthball Scleroderma citrinum, the dye fungus Pisolithus tinctorius and the 'prettymouths' of the genus Calostoma.

The gleba typically has sharply defined basidia-bearing sectors, which are partitioned from one another by sterile veins, and in which the basidia are regularly scattered through the tissue.

Spores are brown, roughly spherical in shape, thick-walled, with spines or warts, or with a network-like appearance.

[7][8] Older analysis suggests that the Sclerodermataceae (including the genera Scleroderma and Veligaster), the Pisolithaceae (Pisolithus), the Astraeaceae (Astraeus), Calostomataceae (Calostoma), and the new families Gyroporaceae (Gyroporus) and Boletinellaceae (Boletinellus and Phlebopus), should form a new suborder, the Sclerodermatineae.