Thallus crustose, thick, thin or evanescent, pale to dark grey, ochraceous, or brown or yellowish, continuous, cracked or areolate, plane, granular or warted, rarely isidiate, determinate or not, with or without a limiting, entire, dark, prothallus, corticolous, muscicolous, terricolous or saxicolous. Photobiont green, . Apothecia lecanorine or lecideine, innate or sessile, usually frequent, contiguous or not, disc brown or black, rarely pruinose, plane or convex at maturity, margins concolorous with thallus or disc, entire or crenulate, persistent or excluded at maturity. Hymenium colourless. Paraphyses expanded at apices, fuscocapitate forming a brown or red-brown, rarely a dark brown or blue-green epihymenium. Hypothecium colourless, rarely brownish to dark brown. Asci of -type [Honegger Lichenologist 10: 47-67 (1978)]. Ascospores 1- or 3-septate at maturity with up to 15 different wall types recognised [Mayrhofer J. Hattori bot. Lab. 52: 313-321 (1982)], with unthickened walls to thick-walled placodiomorph, polarilocular or mischoblastiomorph types, torus well-developed or not, brown, ellipsoid, mostly 8 per ascus. Pycnidia rarely present. Conidia bacilliform.