Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2002. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 1.

Thallus: minutely fruticose, forming small, loosely interwoven, decumbent to cushion-like masses and strands lobes: 60-125 (-200) µm thick, progressively narrowed toward apices; tips: terete, often nodulose; short cilia present, toward the base these becoming rhizines branches: dichotomous or palmate, not coralloid; lateral axes of similar size or with a main axis and smaller side branches, up to 4 mm tall surface: chestnut brown, dark brown, or blackish (sometimes grayish in shade), sparsely to richly and divergently branched; tips shiny cortex: 1-2 (-3) cells thick, cells rounded or ± angular, 4-7 µm diam., the wall somewhat thickened, colorless or ± brown medulla: interior hyphae loosely interwoven, more or less parallel to the surface, toward the base forming a paraplectenchyma photobiont: Nostoc, with bluegreen or green cells, not in obvious chains Apothecia: often common, up to 2 mm in diam., lateral; disc: red-brown, brighter when wet; margin: paler, concolorous with thallus; hymenium: 90-100 µm; paraphyses: septate, unbranched, 1-2 um thick, with a swollen apical cell to 4.5 µm wide; subhymenium: 70-100 µm asci: clavate, 45-62 x 4.5-6.5 µm, 8-spored ascospores: fusiform, hyaline, sometimes becoming pale red-brown, 1-septate, 19-25 (-29) x (4-) 4.5-6.5 (-7) µm Pycnidia: sometimes present conidia: bacilliform, 1.5-3.5 x 1 µm Spot tests: K-, C-. KC-, P- Secondary metabolites: none detected. Substrate and ecology: on moss (or soil), usuaully in moist situations and over acidic rocks, often in and near streams, sometimes also at the bases of mossy trees World distribution: North America, Europe, tropical East Africa and the Canary Islands Sonoran distribution: southern California.