Thallus firmly attached. Pseudopodetia terete or slightly flattened, sparingly to moderately branched forming clumps to 7 cm tall. Surface uniformly corticate, greyish-white or pinkish, matt, smooth, sometimes becoming cracked or wrinkled-verrucose. Phyllocladia rather sparse, short (to 2 mm long), terete, corticate, smooth, simple or sparingly branched. Cephalodia small (to 2 mm diam.) spherical, sessile, brownish-grey, smooth or shallowly wrinkled, sometimes clustered. Apothecia common and often abundant, terminal, large (4-8 mm wide) disc plane, smooth, black or brown-black with a prominent, persistent, pale margin, thalline exciple well developed, pale or flesh-coloured, strongly wrinkled-scabrid. Ascospores 1-2 per ascus, colourless, ellipsoid to cylindrical, irregularly muriform, 50-120 × 30-50 µm. Chemistry: Cortex and phyllocladia K+ yellow; medulla K-, C-, KC-, Pd+ red. Atranorin, argopsin [ Bodo and Tholho C. r. hebd. Séanc. Acad. Sci. Paris ser. C, 278: 625-627 (1974) ; Huneck and Lamb Phytochemistry 14: 1625-1628 (1975)], fumarprotocetraric and perlatolic acids, and an accessory unidentified compound. Lamb (loc. cit. pp. 449-450 ) records that populations of contain two distinct chemodemes, one with fumarprotocetraric acid (Pd+ red), and one in which this compound is replaced by psoromic acid (Pd+ orange-yellow). The two chemodemes are anatomically and morphologically indistinguishable and share the same geographical distribution.