Baeomyces Pers.
Type : Baeomyces byssoides (L.) Gärtn. [=Lichen byssoides L. (=Baeomyces rufus (Huds.) Rebent)]
Description : Thallus continuous, crustose throughout, sometimes with squamules up to 1 mm high, or foliose or slightly placodioid at margins, attached by medullary hyphae or rhizine-like bundles, without prothallus, corticate, heteromerous, cortex poorly differentiated with hyphae ±parallel to surface. Photobiont green, cells ±globose, 8–16 μm diam., in a ±continuous layer. Ascomata apothecia, almost sessile to stalked; disc convex, brownish or red-brown. Hypothecium and hymenium hyaline to pale-brown; epithecium brownish. Hamathecium of paraphyses; paraphyses branched, not anastomosing, slightly swollen at apices. Asci cylindrical to elongate-clavate, 8-spored, thin-walled, apex truncate, with a single functional wall layer, K/I− or with a thin, K/I+ blue internal apical cap. Ascospores ±distichously to obliquely uniseriately arranged, narrow-ellipsoid, colourless, simple and often guttulate.
Baeomyces is a genus of c. 8 species (Kirk et al. 2001) included in the family Baeomycetaceae (Stenroos et al. 2002c; Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005). Taxa with pinkish apothecia, an amyloid reaction in the ascus, and containing baeomycesic and squamatic acids, and formerly included in Baeomyces, are now accommodated in the genus Dibaeis (q.v., Gierl & Kalb 1993) and placed in the family Icmadophilaceae (Rambold et al. 1993; Eriksson 1999; Johnston 2001b; Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004), a view that has received support from molecular studies (Platt & Spatafora 1997, 1999). For recent accounts of Baeomyces s. str., see Ihlen (1997a) and Ryan (2002a). One species is widespread in New Zealand (Galloway 1980a), also occurring in Australia (Johnston 2001a; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).
