When produced, basidiocarps (fruit bodies), are gelatinous and are colloquially classed among the "jelly fungi."

[1] However, molecular research, based on cladistic analysis of DNA sequences, has shown that Tremella is polyphyletic (and hence artificial).

[6] Fruit bodies are gelatinous (but may have a hard inner core mainly composed of host hyphae) and are variously cephaliform (like a brain, with folds and ridges), lobed, or foliose (with leaf-like or seaweed-like fronds).

The basidia are "tremelloid" (globose to ellipsoid, sometimes stalked, and vertically or diagonally septate), giving rise to long, sinuous sterigmata or epibasidia on which the basidiospores are produced.

These spores are smooth, globose to ellipsoid, and germinate by hyphal tube or yeast cells.