Reichlingia

Reichlingia species typically have a thin but well-developed and extensive thallus. The color is pale grey with a weak greenish tint when fresh. The surface is usually more or less felty to faintly minutely granular. The margin is formed by whitish hyphae or a thin brownish line when in contact with other lichens.

The apothecia of Reichlingia are well-delimited and pale brown to brown below a thin whitish pruina. They are often more or less felty due to short projecting tips of the paraphysoids and of the hyphae in the margin. A thin patchy layer of thallus is occasionally developed. The apothecia are level with the thallus surface to adnate. They are rounded, shortly elongate or lobed, or they form irregular star-shaped clusters that are up to 0.8–1.2 mm large. Larger fruitbodies are typically cleft by deep but often incomplete fissures.

Internally, the apothecia are delimited by a greyish to pale brownish margin that is more or less constricted towards the base and often contains pale granular crystals.

The hymenium is unpigmented and conglutinate. It is overlain by a greyish to dark brown epithecium.

The epithecium is formed by largely free, densely branched and intertwined tips of paraphysoids. Pale granular crystals are included in the epithecium.

The hypothecium below the hymenium is colorless or pale brownish.

Asci are of the Arthonia-type and contain 8 spores.

The spores are oblong-ovoid. They are divided by 3–5 transverse septa or they are submuriform. They are persistently unpigmented or have a pale brown pigmentation and a granular ornamentation when old. The apical cell is enlarged in the spores with only transverse septa.

Pycnidia are reported for Reichlingia anombrophila. The pycnidia are 40–80 μm in diameter, immersed in the thallus and with a red-brown wall. The conidia are rod-shaped and 3–5 × 0.7–1 μm in size. Reichlingia leopoldii produces dark reddish to chocolate-brown patches of sporodochia forming dark brown and irregularly branched sporodochial conidia with subspherical to ellipsoid cells. The latter species is not known from Norway.

Reichlingia species produce perlatolic acid, 2'-O-methylperlatolic acid and an unknown xanthone. The hymenial gels in the fruitbodies react I+/ KI+ deep blue or I+ pale yellowish brown/ KI+ pale blue. KI+ blue tholus structures in the asci have not been observed.

The brown pigment in the wall of the pycnidia turns greenish in K solution.