Life habit: lichenized Thallus: crustose, uniform, continuous, sometimes +cracked and scurfy, effuse, or inconspicuous; attached to substrate by prothallial hyphae, ecorticate photobiont: primary one a species of Trentepohlia or Gloeocystis, secondary one absent Ascomata: apothecial, circular, initially immersed but becoming adnate to sessile disc: flesh-colored, orange or brown, translucent and semi-opaque when wet, +flat to strongly concave or urceolate, frequently waxy-looking, pallid, without a thalloid margin exciple: white to gray or concolorous with the disc, well developed, persistent, waxy, cartilaginous and paraplectenchymatous hymenium: hyaline; paraphyses: unbranched, confluent; hypothecium: hyaline or pale, "soft" asci: clavate, unitunicate, thin walled, without a tholus, contents and wall I+ blue or rarely I-, 8-spored ascospores: hyaline, transversely 3-11-septate or muriform, thin walled, ellipsoid to fusiform, non-halonate, not indented at the septa Conidiomata: pycnidial, immersed, hyaline to brown conidia: produced acrogenously, linear or bacilliform, short Secondary metabolites: none detected Substrate: on soil, mosses, bark and rock, on +nutrient- or +base-rich substrates Geography: circumarctic to temperate. Notes: Old ascomata of Gyalecta frequently lose their hymenium, leaving the shining, pale, sterile base and empty exciple of the hypothecium (James and Woods 1992).