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

Molecular research, based on cladistic analysis of DNA sequences, has shown that Tremella is polyphyletic (and hence artificial).

[5] Fruit bodies (when present) are gelatinous, white to amber or dark purple, and pustular to cephaliform (like a brain, with folds and ridges).

[6] 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.

[1] Species are parasitic on wood-rotting fungi in the phyla Ascomycota, specifically those that occur on dead attached or fallen branches.