Pseudocyphellaria hookeri

Detailed description

Thallus ± orbicular, 5-10(-15) cm diam., ± loosely attached, margins ± free. Lobes broadly laciniate or ± rounded, 10-20 diam., margins entire or variously notched or incised. Upper surface slate-blue to brownish-black, conspicuously white-maculate (×10 lens) when wet, conspicuously and often densely reticulate-faveolate, ridges pale (free of algae), smooth or sharp, faveolations deep, matt or glossy, smooth or wrinkled, often suffused brownish centrally, without isidia, soredia or pseudocyphellae. Medulla white. Photobiont blue-green. Lower surface pale buff or whitish with a ± uniform, short, stiff, brownish tomentum, tomentum in short, discrete bundles, wrinkled-bullate, glabrous at margins. Pseudocyphellae white, frequent, raised, verruciform, with a naked, white, waxy margin, 0.05-0.2 mm wide, exposed hyphae in small, punctiform depression. Apothecia ± frequent, sessile to subpedicellate, 1-8 mm diam., concave to plane at first becoming irregularly convex with age, disc black, matt, epruinose, minutely granular, ± shining, margins pale, thin, inflexed, crenulate, thalline exciple concolorous with thallus, smooth or minutely verrucose. Ascospores oblong-ellipsoid, polaribilocular, brown, (20-)23-25(-30) × 8-11 µm.

Chemistry: Cortex C+ red. Hopane-6α,7β,22-triol, tenuiorin, methyl evernate, methyl lecanorate, methyl gyrophorate, gyrophoric, stictic, norstictic and constictic acids.