Summary:
Features include 1) small, hard, black cups that emerge from larch or other conifers, single or in clusters, 2) upper surface black or greenish when moist, 3) stem absent or short, and 4) microscopic characters. The asci of species of Tympanis are usually filled with many small secondary spores: 8 well-developed ascospores are found extremely rarely, (Breitenbach & Kranzlin).

Microscopic:
primary ascospores 7-10 x 3-4 microns, "ellipsoid-fusiform", colorless, one-celled or two-celled, irregularly biseriate to uniseriate; secondary ascospores 2.0-3.0 x 1.0-1.5 microns, cylindric to allantoid, colorless, one-celled; asci at first 8-spored, finally multispored, (70)80-110(120) x (11)13-15(17) microns, cylindric, obtuse at top, narrowed in lower part to a short stem, at first ascus with walls thickened and gelatinized, becoming thinner when mature; paraphyses about 1.5-2.5 microns wide, filiform [thread-like], colorless, septate, simple or branched, "the tips slightly swollen and embedded in a brownish, gelatinous matrix, forming an epithecium"; conidia 2.0-3.0 x 1.0-1.5 microns, cylindric to allantoid, colorless, one-celled, "borne at the tip and along the sides of the conidiophore", conidiophores lining the cavity, about 15-50 x 1.5-2.0 microns, filiform, colorless, septate, not observed branching, (Groves), ascospores are characteristically clavate, sometimes very narrowly so, straight or curved, rather than ellipsoid-fusiform as described by Groves, (Ouellette)

Notes:
Collections were examined from BC, AB, MB, NB, NF, ON, PQ, ME, NY, UT, WY, France, Switzerland, and Japan, (Ouellette). Collections were examined from ID, ON, MA, NH, and Austria, (Groves). There are two collections from WA at Oregon State University.