TYPE. UNITED KINGDOM, England (“Anglia”) s.d., Acharius s.n. (H-ACH, lectotype designated by L. Tibell)

Life form. Lichenized fungus.

Thallus crustose, immersed, indistinct; photobiont Trentepohlia alga. Ascomata stalked apothecia 0.5-1 mm tall, 8-16 times as long as width of stalk; stalk 0.05-0.08 mm diam., black in lower part with a thick yellowish green pruina in upper part; capitulum obconical-obovoid; exciple well developed, with dense yellowish green or rarely ochraceous pruina on lower side. Asci cylindrical, either without a stalk and produced in chains or with a well-developed stalk and formed singly. Ascospores 5-8 µm diam., globose, when mature with an ornamentation formed by irregular, reticulate fissures surrounding small, polygonal areas.

Chemistry. Spot tests negative; no secondary compounds detected by TLC.

Substrate and Habitat. On dry, ± acid bark and wood in forests.

Distribution. Cosmopolitan; in North Carolina found in the Blue Ridge ecoregion.

Literature

Acharius, E. (1810) Lichenographia Universalis. Göttingen. 689 pp (original description as Calicium trachelinum γ hispidulum).

Giavarini, G., O.W. Purvis & P.W. James (2009). Chaenotheca (Th. Fr.) Th. Fr. (1860). Pp. 297-303 in Smith, C.W., A. Aptroot, B.J. Coppins, A. Fletcher, O.L. Gilbert, P.W. James & P.A. Wolseley (eds.). The Lichens of Great Britain and Ireland. The British Lichen Society, London.