Molecular analysis based on the sequences of the internal transcribed spacer DNA of several "Hydnellum" species placed "H. peckii" as most closely related to "H. ferrugineum" and "H. spongiosipes". It has a brown spore print. The specific eponym honors mycologist Charles Horton Peck. The fungus is known in the vernacular by several names, including "strawberries and cream", the "bleeding Hydnellum", the "red-juice tooth", "Peck's hydnum", the "bleeding tooth fungus", and the "devil's tooth". As in all mushroom-producing fungi, the fruit bodies (sporocarps) are the reproductive structures that are produced from fungal mycelium when the appropriate environmental conditions of temperature, humidity and nutrient availability are met. "Hydnellum peckii" is a stipitate hydnoid fungus, meaning that it has a cap atop a stipe (stem), and a form resembling a "Hydnum"—characterized by a teeth-like hymenium, rather than gills or pores on the underside of the cap. Fruit bodies growing closely together often appear to fuse together (this is called "confluence"). They can reach a height of up to . Fresh fruit bodies exude a striking, thick red fluid when they are moist. The cap's surface is convex to flattened, more or less uneven and sometimes slightly depressed in the center. It is usually densely covered with "hairs" that give it a texture similar to felt or velvet; these hairs are sloughed off in age, leaving the caps of mature specimens smooth. Its shape varies from somewhat round to irregular, , or even as much as wide as a result of confluence. The cap is initially whitish, but later turns slightly brownish, with irregular dark-brown to nearly black blotches where it is bruised. In maturity, the surface is fibrous and tough, scaly and jagged, grayish brown in the upper part of the cap, and somewhat woody. The flesh is a pale pinkish brown. The spines are slender, cylindrical and tapering (terete), less than long, and become shorter closer to the cap edge. They are crowded together, with typically between three and five teeth per square millimeter. Pinkish white initially, they age to a grayish brown. The stem is thick, very short, and often deformed.