Cora canari

The thallus of Cora canari is epiphytic and foliose, forming rosettes up to 5 cm across on bark. It comprises three to five semicircular lobes, 1–2 cm wide and 0.7–1.5 cm long, that are unbranched or only sparsely branched and lack radial sutures. Fresh lobes are aeruginous- to emerald-green, becoming green-grey in the herbarium; the thin, rolled-in (involute) margins are grey and glabrous. The upper surface is undulate (wavy) when moist and undulate-rugose (wavy and wrinkled) on drying, with no concentric colour bands. The lower face does not have a cortex (it isecorticate) and exposes a white-grey, felty-arachnoid medulla.^[2]

In section the thallus is 200–250 micrometres (μm) thick. A diffusely viaduct-shaped upper cortex, 20–30 μm deep, overlies a 30–70 μm band of anticlinal hyphae. The photobiont layer is 40–70 μm thick and aeruginous throughout; the medulla is 40–70 μm, hydrophobic, and lacks clamp connections or papilliform hyphae. No hymenophore has been observed, and thin-layer chromatography has detected no secondary metabolites.^[2]

Cora canari is known only from its type locality at 1,581 m elevation near the Sopladora Hydroelectric Project, Morona-Santiago Province, Ecuador. It inhabits moist lower montane rain-forest, growing epiphytically on trunks and branches among bryophyte mats and other lichens, including Coccocarpia species. The lichen's undulate, hydrophobic lobes may facilitate rapid drainage and gas exchange in the consistently humid conditions of this Andean cloud forest.^[2]