TYPE. UNITED STATES. NEW HAMPSHIRE, Coos County, White Mts, 1839, E. Tuckerman s.n. (FH 00079544, holotype).

Description. Lichenized, tripartite fungus.

Thallus fruticose. Primary thallus rudimentary and disappearing. Pseudopodetia whitish, 2-4 cm tall by < 1 mm thick, solitary or loosely to densely aggregated, appearing ligneous, erect or ascending, subsimple and smooth below, becoming much branched and covered with phyllocladia above; phyllocladia grayish white to brownish, granular to lobate-squamulose, 0.3-0.7 or becoming swollen and up to 1.5 mm diam. Photobiont trebouxioid alga; cyanobiont Stigonema in cephalodia; cephalodia rare, olive to brownish. Ascomata biatorine apothecia, rare, 0.3-0.7 mm diam., lateral or sometimes terminal, rarely clustered; disk flat to slightly convex, brownish black to black; ascospores acicular, 3-septate, 22-40 x 2.5-4 μm.

Chemistry. UV-, KC+ reddish, PD-; atronorin, lobaric acid.

Substrate and Habitat. On rocks boreal/montane areas.

Distribution. Eastern North America from Great Lakes to Appalachians to Canadian Maritimes; in North Carolina in the Blue Ridge ecoregion.

Literature

Fink, B. (1935) The Lichen Flora of the United States. University of Michigan Press, Ann Arbor. 426 pp.

Hinds, J.W. & P. L. Hinds. (2007) The Macrolichens of New England. Memoirs of the New York Botanical Garden 96: 1-584.

Lamb, I.M. (1977) A conspectus of the lichen genus Stereocaulon (Schreb.) Hoffm. Journal of the Hattori Botanical Laboratory 43: 191-355.

Riddle, L.W. (1910) The North American species of Stereocaulon. Botanical Gazette 50(4): 285-304 (description as S. denudatum).

Tuckerman, E. (1841) Further notices of some New England lichenes. Boston Journal of Natural History 3: 438-464.