LICHALP

Stereocaulon symphycheilum I.M. Lamb

Lichenised.

Substrate: siliceous rocks

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 circum-arctic-alpine, sorediate, silicicolous species resembling S. vesuvianum in the phyllocladia with darker centers and paler margins, but pseudopodetia prostrate-decumbent and dorsiventral, with confluent phyllocladia, containing atranorin and lobaric acid, with a few records from the Eastern Alps only (Austria), but perhaps more widespread, and hidden behind some of the Alpine records of S. vesuvianum.