It grows on trees in damp boreal forests along the Atlantic coast in Canada, as well as in southcentral Alaska, the Kamchatka Peninsula,[5][6] and Norway.

[8][9] It differs from the two other North American species of Erioderma by lacking soredia, and by having small, reddish-brown apothecia on its upper surface.

[8] Erioderma pedicellatum was first collected in 1902 from Campobello Island, Charlotte County, New Brunswick, Canada, by William Gilson Farlow.

[12] Erioderma pedicellatum grows on mossy trunks and branches of trees on slopes in areas that have a constant supply of moisture, and are rich in Sphagnum moss.

[9] Erioderma pedicellatum, like all lichens, is a symbiotic, in this instance between an ascomycete fungus and cyanobacteria of the genus Scytonema, and is therefore capable of fixing nitrogen.

[16] The symbiosis between the free-living Scytonema and the germinating ascomycete spores of E. pedicellatum is hypothesized to begin within the water sacs of Frullania asagrayana, where the fungal hyphae assimilates a cyanobacterium, and needs to develop for 5 to 10 years before it reaches a visible size.

[9] This complex relationship means that the ecological balance between E. pedicellatum and its cyanobacterial symbiont (Scytonema), its host tree, and (potentially) its liverwort nursemaid (Frullania asagrayana), is very delicate and easily impacted by logging, air pollution, and other factors.

Lockyer's Waters and Hall’s Gullies on the Avalon Peninsula to the southeast, and Bay d'Espoir to the south, are three of the Newfoundland's most prolific rare lichen habitats, and are important for the conservation of E.

[22] The Atlantic population of the E. pedicellatum is protected in Canada under the Federal Species at Risk Act (SARA), and is the focus of an ongoing recovery strategy.

[27] Efforts are being made, through land purchases and agreements with landowners, to formally protect areas of forest that are home to this rare species.

[29] However, the population is in the Denali National Park and Preserve, a protected area, and efforts have been made by researchers to not give away its location within the site so that they will not be tampered with.

Through statistical modeling, more information has been developed on the habitat of E. pedicellatum, including how it prefers older, established forests with poor soil drainage.

[32] However, statistical modeling has disadvantages, including making broad assumptions based on missing knowledge in lichen ecology.

[16] In Norway, the responses of transplanted thalli of Erioderma pedicellatum have been studied to assess the feasibility of increasing its distribution; the conclusion was that reintroduction of E. pedicellatum into the boreal rainforest is possible, but challenging, since well-lit branches of Picea abies with high base cation availability in humid canopy layers are rare.

[7] This article incorporates text from the ARKive fact-file "Boreal felt lichen" under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 Unported License and the GFDL.