[4] It is one of the few lichen genera containing foliose (leafy) species that produce a mazaedium – a powdery mass of spores.

Both species occur in Australasia and South America, where they grow on tree bark or on mosses.

[8] This family was subsumed into the Sphaerophoraceae by Robert Lücking and colleagues in their 2016 classification of lichenized fungi; they reasoned: "there is neither a topological nor a morphological reason to maintain the two families, even if both entities are reciprocally monophyletic and Calycidiaceae has been used for many decades".

Secondary chemicals produced by the genus include xanthones and the orcinol depside compound sphaerophorin.

[6] Both species occur in cool temperate rainforests of the Southern Hemisphere, where they grow on tree bark and sometimes over mosses.