Basidiocarps (fruit bodies) are effused and the genus is sometimes grouped among the corticioid fungi, though species also retain features of the heterobasidiomycetes.

[1] Species are saprotrophic, but several are also facultative plant pathogens, causing a number of commercially important crop diseases.

[4] Molecular research, based on cladistic analysis of DNA sequences, places Ceratobasidium (excluding the type species) within the Cantharellales.

Fruit bodies are effused, thin and often inconspicuous, smooth, waxy to dry and web-like, whitish to pale grey.

Microscopically they have comparatively wide hyphae without clamp connections and basidia that are spherical to cuboid or broadly club-shaped.