Thallus small, squamulose, of rounded cochleate lobes, circular or becoming slightly lobate with rounded lobes, to 5 mm broad, usually less, the margins inrolled and white, the surface blue-green, slightly pruinose; rhizinae lacking but the underside attached to the substratum by a loose network of hyphae. Fruiting bodies uncertain. Upper cortex paraplectenchymatous, several cells thick, uneven in thickness, algae distributed through the medulla in glomerules; the lower cortex plectenchymatous to paraplectenchymatous, thin, the hyphae anastomosing in part into the hyphae penetrating the ground, at the edges the lower cortex is more continuous.

This species seems to always grow on humus, mossy or woody in origin, in partially shaded sites, as the sides of lemming burrows, sides of hummocks, edges of solifluction lobes, etc.

This is a circumpolar species, known from Scotland, Fennoscandia, central Europe. Siberia, southeast Greenland. In North America it is known from Baffin Island, Labrador, Ungava Peninsula, Northwest Territories, Alaska, and south in the eastern mountains to Mt. Washington and Mt. Adams in the White Mountains and Mt. MacIntyre in the Adirondacks.

This species would easily be confused in gross appearance with Normandina pulchella, a temperate zone lichen, but that species has no upper cortex, is homiomerous, and its alga is Pleurococcus.

In European treatments this is generally placed as a lichenized thallus of the gilled basidiomycete Omphalina luteolilacina (Favre) Henderson.