Altitudinal distribution: montane belt (potential vegetation: deciduous forests dominated by Fagus sylvatica and closed coniferous forests with Picea abies)
Note: a calcicolous species resembling in habitus V. tristis, but with smaller fruiting bodies, with a spreading, epilithic, rimose to areolate, brownish thallus, black and partly protruding, spherical ascomata (0.25-0.5 mm in diam.), an involucrellum tightly adpressed to the wall and reaching down about two third of the perithecium, the wall only weakly pigmented in the lower half, 8-spored asci, and oblong to ellipsoid, simple ascospores (17-20 × 6-7 μm); only known from the type locality in the Western Alps (Switzerland).
