[4][5]Mordecai Cubitt Cooke and George Edward Massee first described the species as Agaricus galanthinus in 1890.

[8] The holotype specimen was collected by Mordecai Cubitt Cooke and George Edward Massee in New Zealand in 1890.

[8] The lamellae are a distinct rust to cinnamon brown, not lacunose or anastomosing, adnate or adnexed, sometimes subdecurrent and floccose with a coloured edge.

The cheilocystidia are 15–45 × 12–25 μ and are thin-walled, hyaline, clavate or lageniform with a sterile zone at the edge.

[8] Tympanella galanthina is found in New Zealand forests among leaf litter or fallen tree fern fronds, and occasionally on rotting wood.

[9] It has been found in association with Beilschmiedia tawa, Sphaeropteris medullaris, Leptospermum scoparium, Nothofagus fusca, N. menziesii, N. solandri, and with Podocarpus.