It is a monotypic genus, containing the single species Guepinia helvelloides, commonly known as the apricot jelly.

The fungus produces salmon-pink, ear-shaped, gelatinous fruit bodies that grow solitarily or in small tufted groups on soil, usually associated with buried rotting wood.

The species was first described and illustrated as Tremella rufa by Nicolaus Joseph von Jacquin in 1778.

Later, Lucien Quélet erected a separate monotypic genus Phlogiotis for Jacquin's species, whereas Julius Oscar Brefeld placed it (as Gyrocephalus rufa) in Persoon's small genus Gyrocephalus (rejected name for Gyromitra).

The upper side (inside) of the fruit body is usually quite sterile or with a few isolated basidia and is slightly verrucose as a result of the densely crowded protruding ends of the hyphae.

The flesh is gelatinous, softly so in the upper part of the fruit body and with a more cartilage-like consistency in the stem.

The basidia (spore-bearing cells) consist of a globular part (the hypobasidia) to which inflated or elongated epibasidia are attached.

However, the red chanterelle species Cantharellus cinnabarinus is superficially similar; unlike G. helvelloides, however, it does not have a rubbery and gelatinous texture, and its undersurface is wrinkled, not smooth.

[15] Dacryopinax spathularia produces small fruit bodies, and Spathulariopsis velutipes has a white head.

The fruit bodies of G. helveloides typically grow solitarily or in small tufts on soil, usually in association with buried rotting wood.

Although the fruit bodies sometimes appear in the spring, they are more commonly found in the summer and autumn months.

[15] It can be used raw in salads, for pickling in vinegar and also for preserving in sugar like candied fruit.