It looks pretty much like a dried out black grape at first glance.
But it has a hole which releases a black powder - which turnes out to be spores, which are more olive brown than black. Here you can see a blade of grass has pierced this one, the base is at the bottom, and just out of sight is the hole in the top from which comes the spores. The shape is not for a mushroom really since it has no visible stem.
The inside of the fungus shown here, it has a carpet of fluffy dust - brownish in this pic, but almost black in the other one I found. It's a powdery dust that gets airborne quite easily.
For scale, that's a windscreen wiper blade.
It "looks" like these fungus are Gasteromycetes, puffballs for us non-fungii, meaning stomach. Not a family as such, so this is not an identification, puffball is more an identification aid.
Time: is late August - I'm guessing this is the mature stage.
Location: Norwich, Norfolk
Site: A school field - an unused field, which we were allowed to pitch tents on. They appear to be loose amongst the grass.
Can anyone tell me what it's called?
