Cora campestris
Cora campestris is a species of basidiolichen in the family Hygrophoraceae. It was formally described as a new species in 2016 by Manuela Dal Forno, Sionara Eliasaro, and Adriano Afonso Spielmann. The specific epithet campestris refers to its habitat in the high-altitude fields of southeastern Brazil, where it grows on exposed rock outcrops. It forms rosettes up to 8 cm across with dark olive-grey that have light grey rolled-in edges and orange-brown reproductive patches arranged in a net-like pattern on the underside.
Taxonomy
Cora campestris is a basidiolichen in the family Hygrophoraceae. It was formally described in 2016 by Manuela Dal Forno, Luciana Eliasaro, and José Luiz Spielmann from material collected on Morro dos Perdidos in the state of Paraná, Brazil. The epithet, campestris, refers to the campos de altitude—high-elevation rock-grassland habitats of south-eastern Brazil in which the lichen occurs. The internal transcribed spacer ribosomal DNA sequences separate C. campestris from other rock-dwelling members of the genus such as C. leslactuca and C. fuscodavidiana, supporting its status as a distinct lineage.Description
The thallus of Cora campestris is saxicolous and foliose, forming rosettes up to 8 cm across over cushions of bryophytes on exposed rock. It comprises three to five semicircular lobes, 1–2.5 cm wide and 2–4 cm long, that lie adjacent or slightly overlap. are sparsely branched, linked by short radial sutures, and have a uniform dark olive-grey upper surface when hydrated. The rolled-in margins are light grey and, turning yellowish at the tips after drying. The upper surface is even to very shallowly concentrically when moist and becomes distinctly wavy on drying; no concentric colour rings develop.The lower surface lacks a cortex and shows a light-grey, felty-arachnoid medulla. Vertical sections are 275–350 micrometres thick. A viaduct-shaped upper cortex 15–30 μm deep overlies a 25–75 μm zone of hyphae; the is 180–205 μm thick, orange-brown above and aeruginous-green below. The medulla measures 35–95 μm and lacks clamp connections or hyphae. The hymenophore forms a dense, reticulate network of patches—rounded to elongate, up to 2 mm long and 15 mm broad—with an orange-brown, smooth to slightly felty surface. Sections 90–130 μm thick reveal numerous -like basidioles and scattered four-spored basidia ; basidiospores have not been observed. Thin-layer chromatography detected no secondary metabolites in collected specimens.