It was originally described in 1911 by American mycologist William Alphonso Murrill as Volvariopsis earlei, based on collections made in a Cuban banana field.

A saprotrophic fungus that grows on grassy fields, V. earlei has been reported from Africa, Europe, and North America.

This species was originally described by American mycologist William Alphonso Murrill in 1911 based on three collections made by his colleague Franklin Sumner Earle in Santiago de las vegas (Cuba) a few years earlier.

[4] A year later Murrill transferred his species of Volvariopsis to the genus Volvaria, citing practical concerns about usage of names for non-taxonomists: "A number of species of gill-fungi described by me from tropical America in Mycologia, 1911–1912, under genera not found in Saccardo's Sylloge, are here recombined for the benefit of those having or using herbaria arranged according to this work.

Collectors, pathologists, and others who may not be intimately acquainted with taxonomic methods will probably find it more convenient to follow the one system until a comprehensive revision is completed, at least for some important groups".

The generic name Volvariella, proposed by the Argentinean mycologist Carlos Luis Spegazzini in 1899,[8] would be adopted for this group in 1953 after a proposal to conserve Kummer's Volvaria against De Candolle's Volvaria was rejected by the Nomenclature Committee for Fungi[9] established under the principles of the International Code of Nomenclature for algae, fungi, and plants.

[10] The specific epithet earlei comes from the surname of Franklin Sumner Earle, the collector of the original samples, to whom Murrill dedicated the species.

It can have a low, broad umbo in the center in old specimens; the surface is markedly viscid in fresh fruit bodies; the cap is pure white, but sometimes develops pale brown tinges with age.

The gills are crowded together, free from attachment to the stipe, ventricose, and up to 6 mm broad; they are white when young but turn pink with age as the spores mature.

Volvopluteus gloiocephalus has larger fruit bodies (cap more than 5 cm (2 in) in diameter), has pleurocystidia, and the cheilocystidia lack long apical outgrowths.