Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2004. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 2.

Thallus: foliose to subfruticose, up to 0.5-1 cm tall, often depressed, forming small, very irregularly shrubby, densely branched masses 1-4 cm broad, either lobe-formed or very irregularly fringed, attached by a basal holdfast and with short side lobes (fibrils) lobes: main ones foliose to erect, usually convex, very irregular in lobe width (0.5-1.5 mm wide), soon mostly irregularly branched, near the lobe tips profusely branched which are mostly densely crowded and to 0.2-0.6 mm wide; branches ends: with groups of irregularly globose, swollen-warty, isidia-like structures (blastidia) upper surface: yellow to deep orange, often largely gray; often impregnated with dust particles collected by the short hairs, not ciliate lower surface: pale gray to white or yellow at the lobe tips, whole or cracked exposing the medulla with the remaining cortex strands forming a reticulate pattern hairs: similar to the ones in T. californicus, though shorter and only well developed at the lobe tips where they are 0.02-0.08 mm long soredia: farinose to mostly granular and becoming blastidious consoredia, white to greenish white, diffuse, mostly near the lobe tips of the lower surface (also on side lobes) but sometimes also further down; blastidia: terminal and yellow lobe anatomy: composed of three irregular layers upper cortex: prosoplectenchymatous, composed of +longitudinally running hyphae, 10-50 µm thick or running all the way to the bottom medulla: interrupted by cortex strands with algae in somewhat scattered groups at the top of the medulla, 25-100 µm thick lower cortex: prosoplectenchymatous, 0-50 µm thick or running all the way from top to bottom, with the same composition as the upper layer, with thin patches of medulla exposed where the cortex is missing; cortex hyphae: (3-)4-5(-7) µm thick, with rigid and strongly conglutinated (pretreated in K followed by water) walls 1-1.5 µm thick Apothecia: rare, laminal and subterminal, often stipitate, thick and sturdy, 1-3 mm wide disc: darker than the thallus often becoming reddish orange, strongly concave when young becoming slightly concave to plane and sometimes somewhat folded with age, often becoming excluded with age; thalline margin: usually thick, whole, elevated over the disc asci: oblong to clavate, 45-60 x c. 15 µm, 8-spored ascospores: hyaline, polaribilocular, oblong to narrowly ellipsoid, 13-17 x 7-9 µm, septal width 1.5-2.5 µm Pycnidia: large and protruding, laminal on the wider branches or terminal, orange to reddish orange, 0.15-0.3 mm wide conidia: hyaline, simple, ellipsoid when young, narrowly ellipsoid to bacilliform when mature, 3-4 x 1.5-2 µm, Spot tests: K+ purple, C-, KC-, P- Secondary metabolites: anthraquinones: parietin (major), fallacinal, teloschistin, and parietinic acid (all minor), and emodin (minor) (chemosyndrome A). Substrate and ecology: on calcareous rock, at intermediate to high elevations World distribution: central and southern Europe, central Asia, northwestern Africa, Greenland, and western North America in the intermountain regions Sonoran distribution: northern Arizona. Note: Teloschistes contortuplicatus, together with T. californicus and several other Teloschistes species, will be separated into a new genus in the near future.