Description: This shade-loving lichen is rare both in Ireland and in Britain. Dubbed ‘Fancy writing’, it establishes its colonies where shaded bark communities are intermittently flushed with water as part of the stem flow regime of trees. It usually grows surrounded by Enterographa crassa, but differs from that species in the pink-coloured glow of the thallus, Pd+ yellow-orange reaction and larger, wrigglier discs which resemble Hebrew or Greek lettering. Currently, it is known only from Fermanagh where it grows on an ash. Previous records of the species were gathered from Counties Kerry, Limerick and Galway.

Key Identification Features:

• On the flushed bark of ash or beech (Britain); discs longer than E. crassa, often branched on a paler, pinkish thallus
• Thallus Pd+ yellow-orange; P-, in E. crassa and E. hutchinsiae.

Original text submitted by Vince J. Giavarini

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

iNaturalist: Enterographa elaborata at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.