Summary:
Features include a minute, honey-yellow to brown basidiomycete fruitbody that is broadly tubular to narrowly cup-shaped with a cream to yellowish inner spore-bearing surface, external hairs incrusted by granules, and microscopic characters. The synonymy of Cyphella mellea Burt according to W.B. Cooke is disputed by Reid on the basis that it has very broadly ellipsoid-ovate spores 4.5-7 x 3.5-5.25 microns.

Microscopic:
colorless spores 4.75-7.5 x 3.2-4.2 microns with a few brown spores present 7.2-7.5 x 4-4.2 microns, elliptic (not ovate), and in another collection 6.2-7.2 x (3)3.75-4.2 microns, elliptic, all colorless; hairs bluntly rounded at apex, (Reid), spores (5)6-8(10.5) x 3-5.5 microns, ovate, smooth, contents granular, giving the appearance of a rough wall at lower magnifications, at first colorless, some becoming brown after spore discharge, in some collections more than half the spores brown; basidia 4-spored, 13.5-24 x 5-7 microns; surface hairs 50-150 x 3-6 microns, straight, brown, appressed, smooth in lower part, granule-incrusted on outer half to two-thirds of length, tapered to a point, (Cooke)

Notes:
The distribution is BC, WA, and also MB, NS, ON, AL, CA, CO, DE, FL, IA, IL, IN, KS, KY, LA, MA, MD, MI, MO, NE, NC, NJ, NY, OH, PA, TN, and WV, (Ginns), and Cuba, Argentina, Brazil, Venezuela, Austria, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Hungary, Italy, Latvia, Poland, Russia, Sweden, United Kingdom, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Algeria, and Australia, (Cooke, but note that Reid states all of the Kew Herbarium collections determined by Cooke as this species in fact belonged to the taxa that Cooke places under Cyphellopsis anomala).

Synonyms and Alternate Names:
Hyphodontia cineracea (Bourdot & Galzin) J. Erikss.
Peniophora glebulosa Bres. ssp. cineracea Bourdot & Galzin