[1][3][4] Its high prevalence in the air and production of allergens makes C. herbarum an important exacerbant of asthma and hay fever.

[8] Cladosporium herbarum is also found all over the world on dead organic material, in the soil, and sometimes appears as a plant parasite.

[8][10] In young cultures, newly-formed spores show growth by budding into a large, multi-branched mycelium.

[2][15][11][10] Under microscopy, these stalks appear pale or dark brown in color and have smooth or rough walls.

[11] This species is distributed worldwide, inhabiting polar, temperate, mediterranean, subtropical, tropical, forest, grassland, and arable soil regions.

[2][15] It is the most common fungal species found on living leaves (given suitable conditions) and dead plant material in very moist environments.

[2] Cladosporium herbarum causes spoilage of fresh fruits and vegetables including yams, peaches, nectarines, apricots, plums, cherries, tomatoes, and melons.

[13] Being able to survive at temperatures below freezing, C. herbarum can cause "black spot" spoilage of meat in cold storage (between −6 °C (21 °F) and 0 °C (32 °F)).

[2][4][10] This species appears more frequently during the summer than the winter with peak concentrations of airborne spores found during the afternoon of a 24 hour cycle.

[10] Toxic effects of C. herbarum on warm-blood animals have been reported when they were fed with heavily infected wheat.

[2] It can produce a toxin causing mucosal damage in horses, and mycelium extracts are shown to have low-level toxicity in chicken embryos.

[2] Using molecular diagnostics, C. herbarum internal transcribed spacer (ITS) sequences have been found to be identical to those of Cyphellophora laciniata.