Description: This small, crustose epiphyte is an easy species to recognise once you have been shown it, but for much of the time it lies low, blending in with the surroundings. The thallus is variously shaped, but commonly small, about the size of an entire fingernail; it resembles a pale green patch of discoloured tree bark. It will show on sallow bark among swampy marshes. Look for the flaccid, needle-like strands which grow out from the surface like the end of a trouser-belt. Named hyphophores, these structures are unique among Irish lichens only to Gyalideopsis. Discs are frequent, orange or red-brown (0.2-0.4mm diam.) like melted fruit gums. You will also find it on thin, dead twigs but always in shaded, boggy places, habitats that Ireland has in abundance. Under-recorded; Northern central and southern Ireland.

Key Identification Features:

• Tiny fingernail-sized thallus; pale grey with numerous, slender, spiky, isidia-like hyphophores
• In moist, humid, woodlands commonly on sallow bark, living or dead; discs tiny, like sucked fruit gums (yellow-orange to red-brown).

Original text submitted by Vince J. Giavarini

Distribution Map from NBN: Jamesiella anastomosans at National Biodiversity Network mapping facility, data for UK.

iNaturalist: Jamesiella anastomosans at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.