Basidiocarps (fruit bodies) are formed on dead wood and are either bracket-like with a poroid hymenium or densely clavarioid.

Elmerina was described by Italian mycologist Giacomo Bresadola to accommodate a distinctive polypore originally collected in the Philippines during the Challenger expedition.

Bresadola named the genus in honour of Adolph Daniel Edward Elmer, an American botanist and plant collector.

[1] English mycologist Derek Reid later discovered that the basidia of the polypore were septate, thus placing the genus among the heterobasidiomycetes, and referred all species of poroid Auriculariales to Elmerina.

[2] Molecular research, based on cladistic analysis of DNA sequences, has shown that Elmerina is a distinct genus, but only includes a minority of poroid Auriculariales, others being placed in the closely related genera Aporpium and Protodaedalea and the more distantly related genus Protomerulius.