Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2004. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 2.
Thallus: crustose, rimose-areolate to irregularly areolate; prothallus: indistinct areoles: up to 0.25 mm thick surface: white, dirty white to pale ivory medulla: white, I- Apothecia: black, 0.2-0.7 mm in diam. disc: flat to moderately convex, dull, epruinose or indistinctly pruinose margin: black, thin, vanishing in development, dull to shiny; true exciple: marginally with a thin, 15-20 µm wide, green-black to brown-black rim and a colorless to opaque beige (by crystalline immersion) interior part, peripherally 25-65 µm wide, without (or rarely with) photobionts inside; K-, C-, P- epihymenium: dark greenish black or olive-brown, c. 10 µm thick hymenium: hyaline, (48-)5258(-65) µm tall, I+ blue; paraphyses: simple, occasionally branched and rarely anastomosing, c. 2 µm in diam., with slightly swollen apical cells 4.5-5.5 µm in diam.; hypothecium: hyaline asci: clavate, 8-spored, Bacidia-type, 40-50 x 8-10 µm ascospores: narrow oblong, (12.5-)16.216.4(-24) x (3-)4-4.2(-5) µm, length-width-index 4-4.1 Pycnidia: immersed, globular, tiny conidia: cylindrical to filiform, 14-21 x 0.6-1 µm [poorly developed] Spot tests: cortex and medulla K-, C-, KC-, P- Secondary metabolites: none detected. Substrate and ecology: on exposed acidic rocks in coastal areas World and Sonoran distribution: southern California and Baja California Sur. Notes: After studying in detail some 40 specimens of Adelolecia kolaensis, an alpine species known from Colorado, it turns out to be a rather polymorphic species; in contrast, A. sonorae with only two known specimens is insufficiently known. Thus, I am not sure whether the diagnostic differences given will prove as stable, when additional material become detected. The pycnidial characters seem to be clear at a first glance: bacilliform in A. kolaensis versus filiform in A. sonorae. However, only very few and scarcely developed pycnidia could be found (hopefully belonging to the lichen studied - another problem with the crusts with thin to lacking epilithic thalli). In addition, the spores of A. kolaenis are slightly broader than those of A. sonorae. Another argument to treat A. sonorae as different of A. kolaensis is plant geography. Adelolecia kolaensis is a boreal-arctic floristic element (see distribution map in Hertel and Rambold 1995), both unknown from Mediterranean southern Europe or humid-oceanic Western Europe. These Sonoran records of Adelolecia show a very different behavior.