Altitudinal range: from the subalpine belt (potential vegetation: open, taiga-like forests dominated by Larix decidua and/or Pinus cembra and Rhododendron) to the alpine belt (potential vegetation: treeless Alpine grasslands and tundras, to the lower limit of perennial snow and the equilibrium line of glaciers)
Note: a species resembling M. garovaglii, but with a thick, densely areolate, olive-brown thallus reacting K-, surrounded by a black hypothallus, and apothecia with brown-black, plane discs (colour not changing when moist) and thin, little prominent, somewhat glossy margins, an unpigmented hypothecium, a brown to olive-brown epihymenium, 8-spored asci, and ovoid to ellipsoid ascospores (10-14 × 7-8 μm); on siliceous rocks (mica-schist, gneiss) in the lower alpine belt; only known from the type locality in the Western Alps (Switzerland).
