Agonimia is one of the few genera in the Verrucariaceae having dark-pigmented perithecia with multilayered walls, lacking an involucrellum, and with colourless muriform ascospores. It includes a dozen species that grow in shaded, moist places as epiphytes, or on mosses at the base of trees, on roots, rocks and various types of soil or plant debris (see e.g. Hafellner 2014). Good descriptions and a key to the British species are in Orange (2013). A worldwide key to all species of the genus was provided by Breuss (2020).
The genus is poorly known in Italy: the present key includes the 7 species known to occur in the country (Nimis 2016), plus 4 species which are known from neighbouring areas in the Alps (see Nimis & al. 2018) or in Central Europe.

References

Breuss O. 2020 (2019). Key to the species of Agonimia (lichenised Ascomycota, Verrucariaceae). Österr. Z. Pilzk., 28: 69-74.
Hafellner J. 2014. Distributional and other data for some Agonimia species (Verrucariales, lichenized Ascomycota). Fritschiana, 78: 25-46.
Nimis P.L. 2016. The lichens of Italy. A second annotated catalogue. EUT, Trieste, 740 pp.
Nimis P.L., Hafellner J., Roux C., Clerc P., Mayrhofer H., Martellos S., Bilovitz P.O. 2018. The Lichens of the Alps. An Annotated Catalogue. Mycokeys, 31: 1-634.
Orange A. 2013b. British and Other Pyrenocarpous Lichens. Vers. II. August 2013. https://museum.wales/.../Orange-A-2013-British-and-other-pyrenocarpous-lichens.pdf

Last modified: July, 18, 2023

Project Dryades, Department of Life Sciences, University of Trieste - CC BY-SA 4.0