Pycnothelia is a small genus of lichen-forming fungi in the family Cladoniaceae. The genus contains three species that form distinctive upright, hollow stalks (podetia) rising from a grainy crust, topped with dark, round fruiting bodies. These lichens typically grow on soil or mossy ground in cool, humid habitats. The genus has a scattered global distribution, with one species found across Europe and parts of the Americas, while the other two are restricted to islands in the Southern Hemisphere.
GENUS
via GBIF
Pycnothelia is a small genus of lichen-forming fungi in the family Cladoniaceae. The genus contains three species that form distinctive upright, hollow stalks (podetia) rising from a grainy crust, topped with dark, round fruiting bodies. These lichens typically grow on soil or mossy ground in cool, humid habitats. The genus has a scattered global distribution, with one species found across Europe and parts of the Americas, while the other two are restricted to islands in the Southern Hemisphere.
==Taxonomy==
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).