At the front is the pneumatophore, an orange-coloured, gas-filled float.

The gas-filled bladder, or pneumatophore, remains at the surface, while the remainder is submerged.

One of the polyps, a gas-filled bladder called the pneumatophore (commonly known as the sail), enables the organism to float.

Ovatoscutum was first described by Martin Glaessner and Mary Wade in 1966 and was tentatively interpreted as a chondrophoran pneumatophore.

The "body" of the plant might hang from its balloon, or be embedded within the float, or spread over the pneumatophore's exterior like a weird growth on the surface of an odd-shaped little plass bag.

This notion was based on morphologies apparently shared between Ovatoscutum and the Devonian Plectodiscus, leading to an interpretation of the organism as a velellid float (pneumatophore), the latter bearing a passing resemblance to the modern chondrophoran pneumatophore Velella.