TYPE. UNITED STATES. Arkansas, Searcy Co., near the town of Canaan, on hickory, July 1954, M.E. Hale 3296 (US, holotype).

Description. Life form: lichenized fungus.             

[modified from Dibben 1980] Thallus gray, epiphloedal, thin to moderately thick; margin +/- entire and weakly zoned, generally more yellowish than the thallus. Surface initially smooth becoming verrucose, always shiny, rimose to rimose-areolate, rarely continuous; areoles (0.4-)1.2(-2.6) mm diam. Vegetative diaspores absent. Fertile warts concolorous with the thallus, pertusariate or erect, more often flat-topped than hemispherical, +/- numerous, crowded or dispersed, sometimes 2-3(-4)-fused, (0.6-)1.2(-2.8) mm diam. Ostioles 1 or (2-)4-6 per wart, hyaline to dark beneath, sometimes surrounded by a white border, level to more often minutely papillate; papillae concolorous with the wart or occasionally eroded, exposing the medulla, (0.05-)0.1(-0.3) mm wide, not grouped in a disclike depression. Ascomata pertusarioid apothecia (1-)2-5(-7) per wart, (0.31-)0.56(-0.87) mm diam.; hymenium hyaline to pink; hypothecium hyaline or pallid; epithecium hyaline or brown, K-. Asci cylindrical, (36-)49(-68) x (289-)382(-468) μm. Ascospores (2-)4(2-5) per ascus, uniseriate and longitudinal in ascus, ellipsoid to fusiform, (24-)38(-52) x (62-)104(-148) μm, the wall and lumen K-. Outer spore wall (2-)3(-5) μm thick; inner spore wall (4-)8(-12) μm thick, laterally roughened on the inner surface, radially grooved or channelled, generally trimmed; end wall (6-)18(-28) μm thick. Pycnidia not known.

Chemistry. Cortex UV+ yellow or yellow-orange, K- or + weak yellow, KC- or + weak yellow, C-, PD-; medulla spot tests negative; lichexanthone.

Substrate and habitat. Corticolous hardwood and less often conifer trees.

Distribution. Southeast central North America (Ozark highlands to southern Appalachians); in North Carolina found in the Blue Ridge ecoregion.

Literature

Dibben, M.J. (1980) The Chemosystematics of the Lichen Genus Pertusaria in North America North of Mexico. Publications in Biology and Geology No. 5, Milwaukee Public Museum Press, Milwaukee. 162 pp (original description).