Altitudinal distribution: subalpine belt (potential vegetation: open, taiga-like forests dominated by Larix decidua and/or Pinus cembra and Rhododendron)
Note: a species resembling V. aquatilis, with an epilithic, continuous to rimulose-areolate, brown-black thallus forming patches of about 1 cm in diam., a pigmented lower medulla, hemispherically protruding ascomata (to c. 0.2 mm in diam.) partly covered by a thalline layer, an involucrellum adpressed to the perithecial wall and fusing with the basal layer, and subglobose to broadly oblong ascospores (to 10 µm long); on calcareous stones near a lake, only known from the type locality in the Eastern Alps (Austria), and from Liguria (outside the Alps).
