Ramalina portuensis Samp.

   Thallus shrubby, small tuft-forming, more or less erect, branches thick, 1 mm wide and 0.5-3 cm long, widen, swollen and distorted towards the base, surface smooth and shiny surface sometimes more or less covered with minute depressions, pale grey-yellow, medulla hollow, subcortex cartilaginous, soralia numerous in crevices, torns and longitudinal lacerations, mostly towards apices, granular whitish soredia within the bottom of lacerations. Sterile in our prospection area. C-, K+ red, KC + red, Pd+ orange (but there seems to be K + yellow (cortex) and K + red (medulla) chemotypes). Grows mainly on trunks of small trees, heaths and more scarcely in the aerohaline zone on rocks in highly exposed and windy habitats (Islands). This species is common in the Scilly islands and documented in Brittany islands and in exposed Capes and Heads. Similar to Ramalina farinacea but without farinose soredia on branch margins, and the base of branches of this K+ red chemotype are not swollen and hollow ; much more similar to Ramalina subfarinacea chem K+ rouge, P+ jaune but this latter shows soralia that are not coming out of cracks in te cortex. Not to be confused with Evernia prunastri var. arenaria which is less sorediate and of which the branch upper and lower surfaces have different colors and not K+ red. N.B. Other rather similar Ramalina species are K-.*