LICHALP

Vezdaea retigera Poelt & Döbbeler

Lichenised.

Substrate: calciferous soil, living mosses

Altitudinal range: from the submediterranean/colline belt (potential vegetation: mixed deciduous forests dominated by Quercus and Carpinus) 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 with a thallus composed of goniocysts provided with short hyphal spines, brown apothecia (to 0.35 mm in diam.) with a rough surface when moist, branched and anastomosing interascal filaments forming loose envelopes around the asci, and hyaline, simple, ellipsoid ascospores (to c. 20 µm long); on soil and moribund bryophytes, widespread in the Northern Hemisphere but rarely collected, probably due to its minute size, with a few records from the Alps.