Pyxine consocians

Pyxine consocians is a foliose lichen. The thallus (lichen body) is fairly thin, bluish-grey above and epruinose (without pruina), somewhat opaque, and lacks soredia and isidia. Its surface is faintly net-like and wrinkled, and the medulla (the inner layer) is white. In basic chemical tests, the upper surface gives no reaction (K−), while the inner medulla reacts K+ (yellow → red). The lobes are irregular, 0.5–1 mm wide, closely adjoining or merging together, flat, and have slightly roughened or grainy margins. The underside is dark and bears short, black, inconspicuous rhizines that attach it to the substrate. The apothecia (disc-like fruiting bodies) are 0.5–1.6 mm across and lecideine in form, with a blackish to ashy-black rim. The disc is flat, black, and uncoated, and the inner excipulum is pale whitish. The hypothecium is whitish below, brownish above, and K−, while the epithecium is greenish to sooty and K+ (violet). Ascospores, which number eight per ascus, are arranged in two rows, brownish, fusiform to oblong with rounded ends, and divided by a single septum. Their walls are unevenly thickened (more so at the ends and the septum), and they measure about 20 μm × 6 μm. …

The type material of Pyxine consocians is from Comiran (Philippines), collected by Elmer Drew Merrill (specimen 7167 p.p.), on the bark of a broad-leaved tree, collected together with P. glaucescens. It has since been documented throughout Asia: from Uttar Pradesh (India), South Korea, Sri Lanka, and Thailand. It also occurs on the Onotoa atoll in the Gilbert Islands, and in the Maldives archipelago.

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