Galapagos Species Database
The Galapagos Species Database shares the information about the species from our Natural History Collections.
Leptogium cyanescens
liquen de piel gelatinosa, Jellyskin lichen, vinyl lichen
Thallus slate gray to grayish black when dry, olive when wet, foliose, adnate, papery thin; outline ± orbicular; lobes distinct, elongate, ± broadened and flattened, regularly spreading (fan-shaped); surface smooth to barely striate, dull, but not distinctly wrinkled; isidia numerous, quite variable in shape and size, either cylindrical and typically becoming branched, or becoming flattened, scale-like or lobules (phyllidiate), abundant across the thallus surface, but occasionally also along the thallus margin; apothecia rare, sessile to shortly stalked, laminal, expanded; disk pale to deep reddish brown, initially concave, flattened or indistinctly convex with age; margin lecanorine, typically pale, cream colored, rarely concolorous with the thallus, entire or isidiate, with a broad paraplectenchymatous outer thalline exciple and an inner, indistinct, thin, prosoplectenchymatous proper exciple; ascospores ellipsoid to fusiform, typically transversely 3-septate, rarely becoming submuriform with the formation of an additional longitudinal septum, 19-24 x 6-12 µm.
Easily recognized as a broad lobed species with abundant isidia, rarely also with apothecia. Similar in size and overall appearance to the nonisidiate L. azureum. Swinscow & Krog (1988) suggested that the two taxa form a classical species pair.
Domain
Eukaryota
Kingdom
Fungi
Phylum
Ascomycota
Class
Lecanoromycetes
Order
Peltigerales
Family
Collemataceae
Genus
Leptogium
Species
cyanescens
Taxon category: Accepted
Origin: Native
Map of specimen collection localities or observation records for this species in our collections database.
Distribution: A very common epiphyte, occasionally epiphyllous (fern fronds, large leaves), less common on plant debris, rarely on soil (humus), occasionally also on rock; throughout the humid vegetation zones of islands with higher elevations, most typical in the Scalesia-forests, but also in Zanthoxylon-and Mic
- Weber, W.A. (1986) The Lichen Flora of the Galápagos Islands, Ecuador. Mycotaxon 27: 451-497.
- Elix, J.A. McCarthy, P.M. (1998) Catalogue of the Lichens of the Smaller Pacific Islands. Bibliotheca Lichenologica 70, J. Cramer, Berlin, Stuttgart, 361pp.
- Weber, W.A. (1981) Lichenes Exsiccati, distributed by the University of Colorado Museum, Boulder, Fasc. 1-15, nos. 1-600, 1961-1979. Mycotaxon 13(1): 85-104.
- Bungartz, F. (2008) Cyanolichens of the Galapagos Islands - The genera Collema and Leptogium. Sauteria 15: 139-158.
- Miquel, S.E. Bungartz, F. (2017) Snails found among herbarium specimens of Galapagos lichens and bryophytes, with the description of Scolodonta rinae (Gastropoda, Scolodontidae), a new species of carnivorous micro-mollusk Archiv für Molluskenkunde (in press).
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This page should be cited as follows:
"Galapagos Species Database, Leptogium cyanescens", dataZone. Charles Darwin Foundation, https://datazone.darwinfoundation.org/en/checklist/?species=2950. Accessed 2 August 2025.