Life habit: primarily lichenized, but lichenicolous and parasitic stages exist in some species; Thallus: crustose, continuous to cracked-areolate; upper surface: gray-white to gray or yellowish, smooth to verrucose, often pruinose; epinecral layer: thin, gelatinous; medulla: white; of irregularly interwoven hyphae, I+ bluish or I-; photobiont: primary one a Trebouxia, secondary photobiont absent; layer: horizontally continuous; algal cells: 7-18 µm in diam.; lower cortex: absent; lower surface: firmly attached to the substrate with bundles of hyphae penetrating into it; Ascomata: apothecial but at first perithecia-like, later urceolate, lecanoroid, or remaining perithecioid when mature, laminal, immersed, exciple: brown to dark brown; paraphyses: simple, lax; hymenial gel: non-amyloid; lateral paraphyses present, simple, brownish or hyaline; asci: elongate-clavate to subcylindrical, the wall ± evenly thickened when mature, with a somewhat abrupt apical thickening with a thin, internal apical beak or a downward, convex swelling when young, lacking any apical apparatus, the contents I+ orange-red, the walls I-, not fissitunicate; 1-8-spored; ascospores: broadly ellipsoid, brown to dark brown or purplish black, muriform, smooth, lacking a distinct perispore or gelatinous sheath, I- or I+ bluish; Conidiomata: pycnidial, in slightly raised warts, black; conidia: elongate-ellipsoid or bacilliform, 4-7 x 1-1.5 µm; Secondary metabolites: para-depsides and ß-orcinol depsidones; Geography: cosmopolitan, but with the center of distribution in semi-arid subtropical regions; Substrate: soil, moss, detritus or rocks.