Thallus: crustose, usually thin, consisting of more or less discrete areoles, up to c. 0.5 mm wide sometimes with minutely lobate margins, or thick, with contiguous areoles, up to 0.5-0.7 mm wide, plane or rugose surface: light gray, dull; margin: indeterminate, rarely determinate; prothallus: present on smooth surfaces, dark, fimbriate; vegetative propagules: absent Apothecia: sessile, frequent, typically scattered, up to 0.7-1 mm in diam. disc: black, plane becoming slightly convex thalline margin: concolorous with thallus, entire, c. 0.1 mm wide, persistent or becoming partly excluded; excipular ring: sometimes present, raised thalline exciple: 80-90 µm wide laterally; cortex: 10-20 µm wide; cells: up to c. 5 µm wide, not pigmented; algal cells: up to 12-17 µm in diam.; thalline exciple: 100120 µm thick below; cortex: 30-50 µm thick, columnar proper exciple: hyaline, 5-10 µm wide laterally, expanding to 15-25 µm at periphery hymenium: 80-90 µm tall; paraphyses: 2-3 µm wide, not conglutinate, with apices up to 3.5-5 µm, lightly pigmented, immersed in a dispersed pigment forming a red-brown epihymenium; hypothecium: hyaline, 40-70 µm thick asci: clavate, 50-60 x 16-17 µm, 8-spored ascospores: brown, 1-septate, ellipsoid, developmental type A, Physcia-type, (16.5-)19-20.5(-22.5) x (8-)9-10(-11) µm; lumina becoming inflated but retaining thick apical wall; torus: pigmented; walls: ornamented (Fig. 62) Pycnidia: immersed in thallus, ostioles pigmented; conidiophores: Type I conidia: bacilliform, 3.5-5.5 x 1-1.5 µm Spot tests: K+ yellow, C-, KC-, P- or P+ faint yellow Secondary metabolites: atranorin in cortex, zeorin in medulla. Substrate and ecology: a shade tolerant species of siliceous and basaltic rocks, frequently being found on vertical or overhanging rock faces, and boulder fields in montane habitats World distribution: Europe, Africa and western North America (Rocky Mountains from Alberta to Arizona, Black Hills, coastal ranges, Sierra Nevada) Sonoran distribution: mountains of Arizona, coastal ranges of southern California and Baja California, at elevations of 1375-3540 m. Notes: Rinodina confragosa is in many ways the saxicolous equivalent of R. capensis, possessing Physcia-type spores, a columnar lower cortex, and atranorin and zeorin. The species is similar in thallus morphology to some forms of R. bolanderi but that species has larger, Teichophilatype spores.