Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2004. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 2.
Thallus: crustose, discontinuous, composed of discrete or contiguous, convex, often almost granular or somewhat effigurate areoles, or continuous, rimose to areolate surface: gray-green or gray-brown, wrinkled or warted Apothecia: flat, remaining so or eventually becoming convex, 0.3-0.7 mm in diam. disc: usually gray-brown to dark purplish brown to black-brown, seldom paler (pink, pale orange, blue-gray, or yellow-brown) but often mottled with different hues, epuinose margin: concolorous with disc or slightly darker, sometimes paler in lower than upper part, distinct, level with or raised above disc, persistent exciple: laterally 25-60 µm wide, without crystals, colorless to pale orange to gray-brown, often green-gray or dirty green (K+ violet, C+ violet, N+ red) along upper part of edge, fading below; cells gradually becoming wider from interior to edge epithecium: green-gray to dirty green (K+ violet, C+ violet, N+ red), sometimes with gray-brown spots (K+ purplish, N+ orange), without crystals hymenium: hyaline, 55-85 µm tall; paraphyses: 1-1.2 µm wide in mid-hymenium, apices ±clavate, only slight swollen, or sometimes tapering, 0.8-4.4 µm wide, with distinct external hoods of granular pigment hypothecium: almost colorless to brown-orange (K+ intensifying , N-) asci: clavate, 8-spored ascospores: hyaline, 3- to 15-septate, acicular or occasionally long-bacilliform, straight, slightly curved, or sometimes sigmoid, 22-69 x 1.6-2.9 µm Pycnidia: not observed Spot tests: all negative Secondary metabolites: none detected. Habitat and ecology: on bark of Quercus agrifolia and Prosopis in forested mountain slopes at 500-1100 m World distribution: neotropical, extending northwards into warm-temperate, coastal areas of the U.S. (Florida, Louisiana, and southern California) Sonoran distribution: known from one locality in the Santa Ynez Mountains north of Santa Barbara, California, and one locality in Sierra de San Francisco, Baja California.