Summary:
Features include a saucer-shaped to shallow cup-shaped fruiting body with a red orange spore-bearing upper surface that becomes yellowish or brownish when old, the cup exterior with hairs of two types (far-projecting ones particularly at the margin and shorter, stellate ones toward the base of the cup), lack of a stem, growth on dung, and microscopic characters.

Microscopic:
spores (12)14-18(19) x (6)8-10(11) microns, elliptic, smooth, without oil droplets; asci 175-220 x 9-12 microns, cylindric, not blueing in iodine; paraphyses slender, narrowly clavate in upper part, 3-5 microns broad at top, simple or sparingly branched in lower part, with a few widely spaced septa, [presumably when fresh there are granules or droplets of yellow to red pigmented material]; rooting hairs 100-300 microns long, 12-24 microns wide near base, medium brown, "heavy-walled, 5-12 septate, unbranched, with a number of bulbous rootlike processes at base"; stellate hairs "pale yellow to medium brown, consisting of a swollen basal cell from which project several (2-5) pointed, septate, stiff arms, the arms highly variable in length", (Denison), spores 17.5-19 x 8-9 microns, elliptic, smooth, colorless, without droplets, uniseriate; asci 8-spored, 225-230 x 12-13 microns, inamyloid; paraphyses slender, septate, forked; hairs on the margin and upper part of the fruitbody to 700 x 10-20 microns, "straight, ending in a point, multiply septate, base with multiply forked to lobed roots, brownish"; hairs toward the base of fruitbody "stellate, multiply forked and septate, also brownish", (Breitenbach)

Notes:
Cheilymenia stercorea is found in BC, WA, OR, ID, and also CA, CO, and NV, (Larsen), and BC, CA, CO, MT, NY, and OH, (Denison).