It produces brownish, frondose, gelatinous basidiocarps (fruit bodies) and is parasitic on the mycelium of Stereum sanguinolentum, a fungus that grows on dead attached and recently fallen branches of conifers.

In the UK it has the recommended English name leafy brain[2] and has also been called jelly leaf and brown witch's butter.

The basidia are tremelloid (globose to ellipsoid, with oblique to vertical septa), 12 to 18 by 10 to 14 μm, usually unstalked.

The basidiospores are mostly ellipsoid, smooth, 5.5 to 9.5 by 4.5 to 8.5 μm, and germinate by hyphal tube or by yeast cells.

Following its hosts, fruit bodies of P. foliacea are typically found on dead, attached or recently fallen branches of conifers.