Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2007. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 3.

Thallus: essentially absent Apothecia: biatorine, sessile to very short stipitate, 0.5-1.5 mm in diam. disc: pale orange to red-brown, finally blackening, initially slightly concave, soon plane to convex exciple: up to 100 µm thick when moist, with radially arranged, hyaline hyphae 3-4 µm wide and widely spaced in a colorless gel epihymenium: pale to medium red, encrusted with orange-red granules hymenium: hyaline, 80-100 µm tall; paraphyses: filiform, 1.5-2 µm wide, with apices cemented in a gel subhymenium: hyaline, thick, gelatinous, almost pseudoparenchymatous asci: clavate, 80-100 x 15-20 µm, weakly blue in I, 100+-spored ascospores: hyaline, simple, globose, 2-3.5 µm in diam. Pycnidia: flesh pink to pale orange, 0.1-0.5 mm wide conidia: hyaline but creamy in mass, subglobose to pyriform, simple, 2-3 µm wide, thick walled Secondary metabolites: not investigated. Substrate and ecology: on old resin of pine and other coniferous resins World distribution: North America and Eurasia Sonoran distribution: central Arizona and southern California. Notes: Resins should be checked for two other species, Sarea difformis and Claussenomyces olivaceus (Fuckel) Sherwood, both of which have much darker apothecia. The asci of S. resinae are slightly larger and the paraphyses consistently narrower than in S. difformis, but the easiest distinguishing character are the thick-walled conidia in S. resinae (versus thin-walled). The Claussenomyces species is known from Colorado and it has I- asci, prominently branched paraphyses and ascospores that may become septate to submuriform. The species is species is sometimes described as having a thallus (e.g. Fink 1935), but it has no organized one, as is the case for most lichens.