The species was originally described under the name Agaricus conchatus by French mycologist Jean Baptiste François Pierre Bulliard in volume 7 of his 1787 Herbier de la France.

Young specimens are pliable and fleshy, colored lilac to purple, and have a monomitic hyphal system (containing only generative hyphae).

[7] The following are heterotypic synonyms of Panus conchatus (based on a different type):[1] The cap is 5 to 15 centimetres (2.0 to 5.9 in) in diameter, and is initially convex, but later flattens or becomes centrally depressed in maturity.

The cap is tan, lilac or reddish-brown, and smooth (glabrous); in age the surface may crack into small flattened scales.

[19] Panus conchatus is a saprobic species – deriving nutrition from rotting or decaying organic matter – and fruit bodies can be found on hardwood stumps, logs and sticks, usually crowded together in clusters.

[18] Typical hosts include wood of deciduous trees—especially beech, poplar, birch, and oak, and less frequently on ash and elm.

A study of this and various other pleurotoid species using phylogenetic analysis determined that despite the presence of gills, P. conchatus is closely related to mushrooms with pores, hence their placement in the Polyporaceae family.