It forms slender, cylindrical, yellow fruit bodies that grow on the ground in woodland litter or in agriculturally unimproved grassland.

[3] The species was originally described from Cuba in 1868 by British mycologist Miles Joseph Berkeley and his American collaborator and fellow clergyman Moses Ashley Curtis.

Corner treated the species under the name Clavulinopsis pulchra, a taxon originally described from the United States and part of the C. laeticolor complex.

In America and Asia it grows in woodland, but in Europe it generally occurs in agriculturally unimproved, short-sward grassland (pastures and lawns).

Such waxcap grasslands are a declining and threatened habitat, but Clavulinopsis laeticolor is one of the commoner species and is not generally considered of conservation concern.