It fruits in clusters on dead wood, and has distinctive tall reddish-brown sporangia, supported on slender stalks.

[1] The erect, stalked cylindrical sporangia are arranged into bundles or clusters that are 7–15 mm (0.3–0.6 in) tall.

Each sporangium is supported by a thin, shining, black stalk that is 3–7 mm (0.1–0.3 in) long.

[3] When the fruit bodies consist of milky white sporangia, they are a favoured food source for Philomycus slugs (mantleslugs), such as P. carolinianus and P. flexuolaris.

[5] The slugs emerge at night from under flaps of bark and migrate to more exposed areas at the top of wet logs, bypassing more mature, pigmented fruit bodies for the younger white ones.