I was taking my dogs to the vet and thought initially this was some scat, after further "digging" into it I understood that it was a mushroom. Found growing outside of the clinic under two cultivated hardwood trees. My impression was that it could be a Lactarius species, but I was left speechless after what happened next.

The first specimen I tried to pull out ended up in failure as I snapped the base off which left a majority of the fruit body in the ground. I thought this was odd, so for the next specimen I carefully dug around the base to find a massive sclerotia of mycelium! The sclerotia was about the same size as the stipe, which was unique to me as well (somewhat bulbous, short and stubbed). A couple of the photos (I think #2-3) were taken 30 seconds after holding the sclerotia under water, attempting to wash away the dirt and debris.

The cross section of the specimen shows that it has an empty "pith" in the stipe, or is somewhat hollow as you can see. The sclerotia is just a hardened ball of dirt and mycelium, literally feels like a rock now.

Usually I can put a genus to most of the fungi I see, but this one is different. Eventually I will update with additional information and photos of spores. I wish I would have taken better photos but my dogs were getting antsy.