[4] The taxonomic placement of freshwater and marine Savoryella species has been widely debated, and the genus had been tentatively assigned to various orders within the Sordariomycetes class.

[10] Vijaykrishna et al. in 2006 showed Savoryella belongs to Hypocreales order based on phylogenetic analysis of partial small subunit rRNA (SSU).

According to phylogenetic and molecular clock analyses (Hongsanan et al., 2017;[17] Hyde et al., 2017),[18] the orders Conioscyphales, Fuscosporellales, Pleurotheciales, and Savoryellales cluster together as a distinct clade, with a stem age of 268 Mya.

[3] Generally, Savoryellaceae species share a set of characters including immersed, semi-immersed to superficial, non-stromatic, heavily pigmented, coriaceous (leathery; stiff and tough, but flexible) ascomata, mostly lying horizontally to the host, partly deliquescing (liquefying or melting), paraphyses, unitunicate (single-walled) asci comprises non-amyloid apical annulus, and fusiform (spindle or rod-shaped) to ellipsoidal shaped, transversely septate (walled) ascospores with hyaline (translucent) end cells and brown median cells (Jones and Eaton, 1969;[24] Jones and Hyde, 1992;[9] Tsui and Hyde, 2003;[25] Jones et al., 2009;[12] Boonyuen et al., 2011,[2]).

[10] The sexual morphs of Savoryellaceae species have perithecial (spherical, cylindrical, or flask-shaped hollow) ascomata (fruiting body) with elongate necks, while the asexual morphs are dematiaceous (produce melanin in their cell walls, giving them a characteristic brown colour especially when grown on agar) hyphomycetes with semi-macronematous conidiophores (morphologically different conidiophore from the vegetative hyphae) and monoblastic (one primary germ layer) conidiogenous (producing conidia) cells.

The distant position of Helicoon farinosum (asexual morph of Ascotaiwania hughesii) (Fallah et al., 1999),[31] from the rest of members of Savoryellaceae was confirmed by phylogenetic analysis (Boonyuen et al., 2011;[2] Réblová et al., 2012[32])".

[37][38] For example; Ascotaiwania species have been isolated from submerged and decaying wood in freshwater habitats,[39][40] and are widely distributed in countries such as Ecuador, France, Great Britain, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Mauritius, Taiwan, Thailand, and Australia.

While Canalisporium species are saprobes (processing of decayed (dead or waste) organic matter), mostly on rotten wood and are distributed in tropical regions of both hemispheres of the world.