It forms slender, cylindrical, golden-yellow fruiting bodies that grow on the ground among plant litter.

The species was originally described from Java in 1844 by Swiss mycologists Heinrich Zollinger and Alexander Moritzi.

Corner considered Clavulinopsis amoena to be a globose-spored species of variable colour and form that was widespread in the tropics, particularly in Asia.

[1] American mycologist Ronald H. Petersen initially agreed with Corner that C. amoena was a globose-spored species.

[2] But Petersen's subsequent study of the type specimen showed that C. amoena had ellipsoid (not globose) spores and was therefore not the same taxon described in earlier works.