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

Thallus: usually foliose (one species crustose to squamulose), lobate, dorsiventral, heteromerous, wide-spreading, or in one species, reduced to a collar around the apothecia lobes: rounded, margins flush with substrate or slightly raised upper surface: green-gray, +bright green when wet, smooth to scabrid, dull or slightly shining upper cortex: paraplectenchymatous photobiont: primary one a Coccomyxa green alga, secondary one Nostoc occurring in internal or external cephalodia; algal layer: continuous layer below upper cortex lower surface: indistinctly veined, tomentose, and with clusters of simple or +branched rhizines Ascomata: apothecial, large, rounded, irregularly scattered, impressed to +deeply immersed in the upper surface disc: dark red-brown, slightly to very deeply concave; exciple: absent hymenium: hyaline to pale brown; paraphyses: simple, conglutinate, not or little swollen at the red-brown apex asci: clavate, Peltigera-type, (1-)2-, 4-, or 8-spored ascospores: red-brown or brown, 1(-5)septate with a median constriction, ellipsoid to fusiform; wall +uniformly thickened, surface ornamented or +warted Conidiomata: unknown Secondary metabolites: mostly none detected but one species with solorinic acid (orange pigment) and two species with methyl gyrophorate Substrate: on soil (usually calcareous) Geography: arctic-alpine to boreal, bipolar. Notes: Solorina is easily recognizable by the presence of +impressed apothecia which have given rise to the popular name "socket lichens". Some species are parasitized by a fungus that distorts and discolors the thallus to the "Dacampia" form. For a discussion of the taxonomic use of spore characters in Solorina, see Thomson and Thomson (1984), and Martínez and Burgaz (1998).