Description: This rather neat and captivating lichen of natural limestone areas is a fussy coloniser never entering a lichen community with a sparse or pioneer cover of lichens. It occurs in historically rich, calcicole lichen associations, occasionally dominating when other Caloplaca lichens are, for various reasons, either absent or very rare. The scurfy, yellow-grey thallus supports an abundance of flat, orange fruiting discs with a paler margin. A squash of the disc shows the majority of the spores to have a unique, four-celled configuration. West Ireland (The Burren) and County Antrim; scattered elsewhere.

Key Identification Features:

• Always found in rich limestone lichen communities (The Burren, on the limestone mounds of ancient strongholds)
• Thallus mosaic-forming, scurfy yellow with abundant flat-topped discs, these with four-celled spores.

Original text submitted by Vince J. Giavarini

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

iNaturalist: Xanthocarpia ochracea at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.