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All Fungi
Physcia leptalea
Nomenclature
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Family: PhysciaceaeGenus: Physcia
SUMMARY
Thallus 2-4 (-6) cm diam., foliose, much branched with narrow lobes, orbicular, loosely appressed. Lobes 0.7-1.5 mm wide, elongate,radiating, usually partly overlapping, ascending, whitish to pale grey and often with a bluish tinge, matt but not obviously pruinose, shallowly warted and white-spotted with pseudocyphellae in older parts, ciliate. Cilia 0.5-2 mm in length, pale, marginal, sometimes darker at their tips. Undersurface of thallus whitish with sparse slender whitish and often brown-tipped rhizines. Isidia and soralia absent. Photobiont trebouxioid.
Anamorph: conidiomata pycnidia, immersed with hyaline walls except for the dark ostiolar region (seen as black dots on the lobe surface). Conidiogenous cells arranged in branched chains, short, cylindrical, rather ieegular, proliferating percurrently. Conidia 3.5-5 x 1-1.5 µm, cylindrical with rounded ends, hyaline, aseptate, thin- and smooth-walled, without a gelatinous sheath or appendages.
Teleomorph: ascomata apothecia, to ca 3 mm diam., abundant, disciform, laminal, short-stalked. Thalline exciple well developed, persistent. Disc dark brown, sometimes slightly white-pruinose, sunken below the level of the thalline exciple. Epithecium pale brown. Hymenium and hypothecium hyaline. Interascal tissue composed of paraphyses, slender, and sometimes forked above, often clavate at the apex, there covered with a pale brown melanized deposits. Asci 75-85 x 16-22 µm, clavate, short-stalked, with an apical dome ± evenly blue in Lugol's iodine and a hyaline apical cushion, surrounded by a blue outer layer, usually 8-spored but with some spores not developing fully and noticeably smaller than mature spores. Ascospores 19-24 x 9-11 µm, ellipsoidal to cylindric-ellipsoidal, the ends rounded to obtuse, distoseptate, 2-celled, slightly contricted at the ± median septum, smooth and very thick-walled, without an epispore, gelatinous sheath or appendages.
Chemistry: cortex K+ yellow, medulla K– (atranorin).