The name of the type species, Tricladium splendens, has been used for several GenBank accessions. Several of these specimens have multiple genes available and clearly belong in Tricladiaceae. Tricladium, the largest genus of aquatic hyphomycetes, is polyphyletic across Leotiomycetes (Campbell et al. 2009). Specimens identified as species in this genus are likewise spread across the Tricladiaceae phylogeny (Fig 2). These include ex-type specimens for T. obesum (GenBank KC834068, CCM F-14598) and T. terrestre (GenBank NR_160144, CBS 697.73).

The Tricladium species in Tricladiaceae all have dark colonies but conidiogenesis is variable, percurrent in T. splendens and T. obesum, sympodial in T. castaneicola (Tricladiaceae based on LSU sequences, Campbell et al. 2009) and T. terrestre, or determinate in T. indicum, and this perhaps reflects the polyphyletic nature of the genus as currently accepted in a morphological sense.

The sexual morph of T. splendens was described as Hymenoscyphus splendens (Abdullah et al. 1981). Based on the description of Abdullah et al. (1981), it is morphologically similar to the sexual morph of other Tricladiaceae.