Nash, T.H., Ryan, B.D., Gries, C., Bungartz, F., (eds.) 2004. Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 2.
Thallus: crustose, thick to thin, sometimes disappearing, +even, continuous or finely granulose-warty, not cracked or areolate granules: sometimes tumid and intricately convoluted surface: gray-white, or olive-yellow to dirty brown, dull to +shiny, often pruinose Apothecia: abundant but scattered to less often crowded-confluent, frequent, immersed to broadly sessile, (0.4-)0.6-0.8(-2.5) mm in diam. disc: flesh-pink to orange, nearly same color as margin, shallowly to deeply concave-urceolate, epruinose margin: orange-white, sometimes overrun by the thallus, incurved, sometimes radiately streaked but not split exciple: white to flesh-pink, well developed, smooth to crenate, radiate, sometimes +tumid hymenium: hyaline, 90-140 µm tall, I+ blue; paraphyses: 1.5-2 µm wide below, with tips up to 3 µm wide; hypothecium: hyaline to pale yellow asci: cylindrical, with tip drawn out into a conical point; with uniseriate or partly biseriate spores, 6-8-spored ascospores: hyaline, transversely 3 septate, elongate-ellipsoid with rounded tips, (10-)12-16(-21)x 5-6(-7) µm Spot tests: thallus K-, C-, KC-, P- Secondary metabolites: none detected. Substrate and ecology: on mosses and soil associated with basic and serpentine rocks World distribution: circumpolar arctic-alpine in Eurasia and North America (Arctic and western mountains) Sonoran distribution: on the highest peaks in central Arizona. Notes: Gyalecta foveolaris is superficially similar to G. jenensis but its spores remain 3-septate rather than becoming muriform.