Egg: white to dingy-white, gelatinous, to 25 mmdiameter.

Fruit body: an open network of joined arms which make a cage-like structure; 100 mm high and 60 mm wide;with 3 – 10 arms, united at the base to form the stipe. Inner surface wrinkled across the width; outer surface is smoother or may have furrows running down its length; bright red or orange.

Stipe: Very short – sometimes rudimentary and still enclosed within the volva, white turning to pale fleshy-pink or pale yellow – the colour is a lighter shade of the arms.

Gleba(Spore mass): olive-brown, thick and slimy.

Flesh: cellular, spongy.

Smell: foetid, like rotting meat or sewage.

Spore print: olivaceous brown.

Spores:

Notes: this cage fungus is recognised by its pink to red wrinkled arms which form an open mesh.Colus pusillus may be distinguished fromColus hirudinosus by its much larger and more open mesh at the top of whilst C. hirudinosus has distinctly smaller apical meshes.