Thallus: squamulose to small foliose, 1-3 cm diam., often broken up due to growing among mosses, rosette-forming, lobate lobes: initially rounded, becoming ± flattened and elongate (0.5-1.5 mm wide and up to 5 [-10] mm long), irregularly branched, becoming imbricate; apices: sometimes ascending upper surface: red-brown when dry, pale brown to deep green when wet, smooth, nodulose or sometimes with globose to cylindrical isidia marginally upper cortex: paraplectenchymatous, 25-30 micrometer thick medulla: whitish, loosely interwoven hyphae around Nostoc colonies lower surface: brownish white, rhizinate; rhizines: brown, sparse, at base of the lobes Apothecia: not known in Sonoran material, elsewhere rather rare, laminal or marginal, up to 2 mm diam., sessile to substipitate; margin: paler, with short hairs; disc: flat, brown to red-brown, smooth; exciple: 100-145 micrometer wide, true portion paraplectenchymatous, supported by a pseudoexciple; hymenium: brown above, K-, colorless below, I+ blue, 70-130 micrometer; paraphyses: septate simple, 2-6 micrometer wide, ± swollen at the apices and pigmented; subhymenium: hyaline, 45-80 micrometer thick asci: cylindrical, 55-80 x 11.5-14.5 micrometer, 8-spored ascospores: fusiform to narrowly ellipsoid, hyaline, 1 (-2)-septate, 11-27 x 4.5-8.5 micrometer Pycnidia: brown or black above, pale below, immersed, up to 0.6 mm diam. conidia: bacilliform or slightly bifusiform, colorless, simple, 4-6 x 1 micrometer Spot tests: all negative Secondary metabolites: none detected. Substrate and ecology: among mosses on a range of different acidic rocks in moist habitats at intermediate elevations World distribution: temperate regions of North and South America, Europe, eastern Asia and Australasia Sonoran distribution: rare, widely scattered in eastern Arizona.