First described in 1914 from the Jura mountains, its habitat is restricted to montane spruce and spruce-fir forests of the Northern Hemisphere, where it has been recorded from Asia, Europe, and North America.

The species was first described in 1914 by Charles Meylan on the basis of a collection made at an altitude of 1,400 metres (4,600 ft) from the Swiss Jura in September the year before.

Meylan thought the species warranted a new genus based on the unique mode of dehiscence and the makeup of the capillitium.

A single sporangiophore (the fruiting structure) is produced from the semispherical protoplasmodium, which is approximately one and a half times the diameter of mature sporangia.

The columella – arising from the stem tip – matures at the upper end at roughly half the height of the sporangiophore into 7 to 13 simple or occasionally bifurcated, 1 to 4 μm large, dark-brown capillitium strands.

[12] The species grows only on slightly to heavily rotten and barkless deadwood in coniferous forests in cool, moist areas.

B. minutissima has been found growing on the liverwort Lepidozia reptans,[13] although Nowellia curvifolia is the main indicator for the slime mould.

[5] Aphanocladium album is a myxomyceticolous fungus (i.e., living on or within the fruit bodies of myxomycetes) that has been reported growing on specimens of B. minutissima collected from North Carolina.