Description: This dark green (when wet), ground-hugging lichen is not unlike a Peltigera in form but has dish-like discs impressed into the surface like sockets. S. crocea is distinctive through its bright orange lower surface. It colonises areas of late-snow lie and there are nineteenth-century records of it from Mount Brandon in County Kerry. However, it is not there today, so is believed to be extinct. Its rediscovery would be cause for great celebration in Ireland.

Key Identification Features:

• Dark almost olive green foliose thallus with large, brown, socket-like discs and a bright orange-red undersurface with raised ribs
• A lichen of windswept ridges where snow lies through the winter.

Original text submitted by Vince J. Giavarini

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

iNaturalist: Solorina crocea at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.