Basidiocarps (fruit bodies) are corticioid, thin, effused, and web-like, but the fungus is more frequently encountered in its similar but sterile anamorphic state.

Waitea zeae is best known as a plant pathogen, causing commercially significant damage to cereals, grasses, and a wide range of other plants.

It was later considered to be the anamorph (asexual state) of Waitea circinata.

Molecular research has, however, shown that Waitea circinata is part of a complex of at least four genetically distinct taxa, each causing visibly different diseases.

[1] These taxa were initially treated (invalidly) as varieties of W. circinata, but have now been described as separate species.