Species in Sarcoscypha have cup-shaped fruiting bodies (apothecia) that are typically colored bright red or yellow, although a colorless variety of S. coccinea is known.

Anamorphic or imperfect fungi are those that seem to lack a sexual stage in their life cycle, and typically reproduce by the process of mitosis in structures called conidia.

The International Code of Botanical Nomenclature formerly permitted recognition of two (or more) names for one and the same organisms, one based on the teleomorph, the other(s) restricted to the anamorph; this practice was stopped in 2011.

S. coccinea S. macaronesica S. austriaca S. humberiana S. knixoniana S. korfiana S. occidentalis S. mesocyatha S. dudleyi S. emarginata S. hosoyae The phylogenetic relationships in the genus Sarcoscypha were analyzed by Francis Harrington in the late 1990s.

The cladistic analysis combined comparison of sequences from the internal transcribed spacer in the non-functional RNA in addition to fifteen traditional morphological characters, such as spore features, fruit body shape, and degree of hair curliness.

Based on this analysis, one major clade includes the species S. austriaca, S. macaronesica, S. knixoniana and S. humberiana, while another has S. korfiana, S. occidentalis, S. mesocyatha, S. dudleyi, S. emarginata, and S. hosoyae.