Piccolia

Piccolia is a small genus of crustose lichens in the class Lecanoromycetes. First circumscribed by Italian lichenologist Abramo Bartolommeo Massalongo in 1864, it contains ten species. Due to a lack of molecular data, it has not been assigned to an order or family.

== Taxonomy == Massalongo established the genus, which was initially monotypic, to contain the species Piccolia crocea. He named it for Gregorio Piccoli, an 18th-century naturalist he referred to as "the most eminent investigator of the natural world". In 1927, Alexander Zahlbruckner, an Austrian-Hungarian lichenologist, merged it into the genus Biatorella, based on the fact that they shared a number of characteristics: a crustose thallus, multi-spored asci (the lichen's spore-bearing cells) and apothecia that lack a thalline border. However, Austrian lichenologist Josef Hafellner separated the two genera out again in 1994, arguing that Biatorella had been rendered "highly heterogenous" by Zahlbruckner's designation.