Description: This rare, pale, reddish-brown crustose lichen is attracted to the smooth, mossy bark of basic-barked trees such as ash and elm growing in the oceanic south-west of Ireland. The thallus is composed of numerous, rounded tan-brown scales (squamules) which form a kind of crazy-paving revealing a black hypothallus (a kind of underfelt layer) below. A granular powder (soredia), creamy-yellow in colour may spread from the edges of the squamules to cover the entire thallus. It grows in old woodlands and along sheltered waysides.

Key Identification Features:

• Pale chestnut-brown thallus of flattened-rounded squamules attached to the sheltered, mossy tree bark of ash or elm, sometimes resembling a splash of horse manure
• Cream-yellow granular soralia may cover the thallus like a crust.

Original text submitted by Vince J. Giavarini

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

iNaturalist: Nevesia sampaiana at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.