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

Life habit: lichenicolous, several species gall-inducing Ascomata: perithecial; wall: brown, thin; cells: large, polygonal to rounded, almost isodiametric in tangential section but radially compressed and +elongated in longitudinal section; formed by two layers: the outer one with an amorphous brown pigment and the inner one colorless; in ostiolar region with elongated cells converging towards the ostiolum; hyphae of the exciple forming around the ostiolum short, slightly prominent papillae giving this part of the ascoma a slightly granulose appearance; papillae: dark brown, swollen, with rounded apices; in some species hyphoid appendages present hamathecium: present as paraphyses and a crown of periphyses paraphyses: thick, with delicate walls, dissolving in mature perithecia periphyses: thick, mostly unbranched, persisting longer than the paraphyses asci: clavate to cylindrical, short-stalked, with delicate apically unthickened wall, functionally unitunicate, 2-, 4- or 8-spored ascospores: hyaline, rarely with grayish-brownish tinge due to a delicate perispore, mostly one-septate, rarely unicellular or 3-septate, ovoid, broadly to narrowly ellipsoid, oblong or cylindrical, with rounded apices, or fusiform, and then with accuminate tips, often slightly constricted at the septa, septate spores with equal or unequal cells Conidiomata: pycnidial, known only from L. verrucicola, with the oval cavity lined by simple conidiophores with terminal flask-shaped conidiogenous cells conidia: filiform, embedded in a gel Secondary metabolites: many cells in all parts with lipid droplets of various size; ascal wall and hymenial gel not reacting with I Geography: subcosmopolitan, but with center of distribution in extratropical regions Substrate: on different crustose and foliose lichens, specific to genera or, in more diverse lichen genera, to species groups, the majority of species on Physciaceae and Teloschistaceae, type species on Phaeophyscia. Notes: The genus was originally described for some didymosporous pyrenomycetes. After the detection of additional species, it became evident that the generic concept needed to become broadened in order to allow the ascospores being unicellular to 3-septate (Navarro-Rosin's et al. 1998, Hoffmann and Hafellner 2000, Calatayud et al. 2000).