Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2007. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 3.
Thallus: small, irregularly areolate crustose or with small, ±round to irregularly cracked squamules with minutely effigurate margin and finely granulose center squamules: 0.4-1(-1.4) mm wide, with hyphae forming network surrounding photobiont cells, somewhat fountain-like or fan-shaped in the margins upper surface: black, dull to slightly glossy, granulose lower surface: concolorous with the upper surface, attached by tufts of rhizohyphae originating directly from common thallus hyphae Apothecia: thallinocarpous, semi-immersed to sessile, sometimes becoming stipitate, 0.15-0.4(-0.5) mm wide, ±round disc: black, rough, plane to slightly convex or rarely somewhat concave, thalline margin thin, 30-50 µm wide, persisting but indistinct; proper exciple: absent hymenium: continuous, covered by small packets of thalline tissue, IKI+ blue rapidly turning reddish brown, up to 70-75 µm tall; subhymenium: continuous, 20-40 µm thick, somewhat inversely cone-shaped in stipitate frutiting bodies, IKI+ blue ascus: 16-24(-32)-spored ascospores: hyaline, simple, broad ellipsoid, 5-7 x 3-4 µm Pycnidia: globose to broadly pyriform, 70-75 µm wide conidia: ellipsoid, c. 3-3.5 x 1 µm Spot tests: all negative Secondary products: none detected. Substrate and ecology: on various rock types from 500 to 1750 m World distribution: SW United States and NW Mexico Sonoran distribution: central, southern and southeastern Arizona, southern California, and Sinaloa. Notes: This recently described species is very common in Arizona. However, it is easily overlooked or mistaken for a sterile Lichinaceae. When sterile, the thalli are crustose-squamulose with ±effigurate margins and a granulose surface. When fertile, the thalli become irregularly shaped and the granules tend to proliferate. Thin sections may reveal the presence of thallinocarpous fruiting bodies and the fairly characteristic thallus anatomy with large photobiont cells surrounded by short-celled hyphae.