Description: Best to begin by looking for this lichen on a garden wall or bridge across a river near a farm; for you are just as likely to find it there as in an old churchyard. L. erysibe has a scurfy, scruffy, grey to greenish-brown thallus, which is unlikely to attract attention. The discs are small (to 0.5mm diam.), blackish and convex with a pale, thin margin. It grows best where there is some nutrient enrichment of man-made substrates and tends to find its way into small spaces — little ledges, soily or mossy cracks, fissures, gaps where flakes of brick or cement have fallen out. Walls below wayside trees are also good hunting grounds for it. It has one-septate spores.

Key Identification Features:

• The tiny discs on an enriched substrate indicate this species
• Tiny soily sockets, no thicker than a grass leaf blade on urban garden walls, often support it. Also look for it in the gaps between other lichens.

Original text submitted by Simon Davey

Distribution Map from NBN: Lecania erysibe s. lat. at National Biodiversity Network mapping facility, data for UK.

iNaturalist: Lecania erysibe s. lat. at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.