It produces brown, lobed to foliaceous, gelatinous basidiocarps (fruit bodies) and is parasitic on other fungi on dead branches of broad-leaved trees.

[1] In 2004, British mycologist Peter Roberts re-examined the type specimen and transferred the species to the genus Tremella.

Microscopically, the basidia are tremelloid (ellipsoid, with oblique to vertical septa), 4-celled, 18 to 26 by 12 to 17 μm.

[3][2] Fruit bodies of Phaeotremella frondosa and P. foliacea are similarly coloured, but are typically more frondose and, microscopically, have smaller basidia and basidiospores.

[1] The species was originally collected in Bermuda[1] and has been recorded from the Azores,[2] Cuba,[2] Trinidad,[2] Jamaica,[4] Puerto Rico, and (as Tremella auricularia) from Brazil.