Cornicularia is a genus of lichenised ascomycetes in the large family Parmeliaceae. It is a monotypic genus, with a single currently accepted species, the saxicolous lichen Cornicularia normoerica, and is sometimes referred to as the bootstrap lichen. The lichen forms small, dark tufts rarely exceeding 2 cm in height that are anchored so firmly to rocks, with narrow, stiff branches topped by shiny black reproductive discs. It grows on high-elevation, sun-exposed rocks and boulders, where its compact, shrub-like appearance and glossy black-brown surface make it distinctive among mountain l
Cornicularia is a genus of lichenised ascomycetes in the large family Parmeliaceae. It is a monotypic genus, with a single currently accepted species, the saxicolous lichen Cornicularia normoerica, and is sometimes referred to as the bootstrap lichen. The lichen forms small, dark tufts rarely exceeding 2 cm in height that are anchored so firmly to rocks, with narrow, stiff branches topped by shiny black reproductive discs. It grows on high-elevation, sun-exposed rocks and boulders, where its compact, shrub-like appearance and glossy black-brown surface make it distinctive among mountain lichens.
==Taxonomy==
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).