Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2002. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 1.
Life habit: lichenized Thallus: fruticose, 2-3 cm tall, erect to spreading, ± dichotomously branched, sometimes entangled, often flattened but terminal branches sometimes terete, branches up to 3 mm thick lobe surface: light gray brown to gray to reddish brown, smooth to densely tomentose; isidia absent; usually with blastidia cortex: prosoplectenchymatous, 60-100 (-200) µm thick, with conglutinated, thick-walled, mostly longitudinally oriented hyphae, sometimes covered with a colorless layer medulla: white, lax, sometimes with compact, hyphal strands, often rudimentary photobiont: primary one a trebouxioid alga, secondary photobiont absent attachment: by a holdfast Apothecia: present or absent, often numerous, laminal on branches, sessile with constricted base, up to 1.5 cm diam., with a persistent, lecanorine margin, gray; disc: black-brown, convex; hymenium: colorless asci: elongate-clavate, Physcia-type, 8-spored ascospores: ellipsoid to broadly ellipsoid, brown, 1-septate (very rarely 2-septate), polarilocular, varying from the Physconia- to Orcularia-type 20-30 x 10-15 µm, septum 5.3-7.7 µm wide Pycnidia: immersed, upper part brown; conidiophores type VII (Vobis 1980) conidia: bacilliform to fusiform, 3.5-4.5 (-5) x 1 µm Spot tests: cortex and medulla K-, C-, KC-, P- Secondary metabolites: none detected. Substrate and ecology: often growing near the ocean on boulders and branches in open habitats World distribution: west coast of South America, SW coast of North America, Macaronesia, western Europe, especially the Mediterranean region eastwards to Pakistan Sonoran distribution: Channel Islands of southern California and coastal region of NW Baja California. Notes: Originally the species was treated in Anaptychia, but the lobes of Tornabea are entirely corticated and they lack the dorsiventral orientation of foliose taxa and do not have cilia South American populations have been considered to be a second species (T. ephebea (Ach.) Kurok., but Nimis and Tretiach (1997) reduced it to synonymy.