New algae, moss, fungus and lichen records redraw Italy’s hidden flora map

Italy’s botanical map has just been quietly redrawn. A new contribution to the ongoing series Notulae to the Italian flora, published in Italian Botanist on 30 May 2025, assembles dozens of new records, confirmations and exclusions spanning four of the most overlooked kingdoms and lineages of life: algae, bryophytes, fungi and lichens. These are not charismatic flowering plants or photogenic mammals, but the organisms that coat intertidal rocks, line the beds of mountain torrents, sprout from peatlands and cling to alpine cliffs. Yet the technical details packed into this single paper reveal how much of Italy’s biodiversity still escapes the attention of even the most dedicated field botanists.

The algal highlight is a first record for central Italy. Cladophoropsis membranacea, a siphonous green alga of the family Boodleaceae, was collected in June 2024 on rocks in the intertidal zone of the Tor Caldara Regional Nature Reserve at Anzio, near Rome, at sea level. The species was already known from Friuli-Venezia Giulia, Liguria, Campania, Puglia and Sicilia, but had never been documented in Lazio. The Anzio collection therefore extends the documented range of C. membranacea into central Italy for the first time, filling a conspicuous gap between its northern and southern Italian populations along the Tyrrhenian coast.

Among the bryophytes, the most technically intriguing records concern segetal mosses, the little-studied community of species adapted to cultivated fields. Bryum klinggraeffii, a segetal bryophyte instantly recognizable under the microscope by its numerous small raspberry-shaped rhizoidal tubers with protruding cells, was found in a wheat field on the moraines of Lake Garda in Lombardia, a region from which it had never been reported. The same site yielded Dicranella staphylina, a species described less than a century ago that was probably ignored for decades, as shown by its recent rediscovery in Russia and Turkey. D. staphylina demands strong anthropogenic disturbance because its propagules must be exposed to light to germinate, which explains its occurrence in ploughed fields, flowerbeds and cemeteries. Both records confirm that the peculiar habitat of cultivated fields remains among the least known in Italian bryology.

Equally striking is the confirmation of two aquatic mosses in Liguria after more than half a century of silence. Cinclidotus aquaticus and Cinclidotus fontinaloides, both members of the family Pottiaceae, were last reported in the region from samples collected before 1968. The new surveys, carried out during macrophyte sampling across eleven and seventeen watercourses respectively, found the mosses on submerged stable and coarse substrates, boulders and rocks in fast-flowing rivers, often growing together with C. riparius and the aquatic moss Rhynchostegium riparioides. C. aquaticus occupied the flood-zone of torrents from the Argentina and Bisagno to the Magra and Vara, while C. fontinaloides was identified more frequently on periodically emerged substrates in the flood-zone of medium and fast-flowing waters. The confirmations suggest that these riverine mosses never disappeared from Liguria, but simply went unrecorded.

Another bryophyte confirmation carries a historical echo. Pulvigera lyelii, an epiphytic moss first reported in Lazio in 1933 at the Botanical Garden of Rome and subsequently at Lake Albano in 1962, was refound at both of those historic localities and at seven new sites across the provinces of Rome, Rieti and Viterbo. The species grows on the trunks of Quercus cerris, Q. ilex, Tilia, Prunus and Robinia pseudacacia, but appears particularly linked to sites where microclimatic conditions guarantee a constant presence of atmospheric humidity, a technical detail with obvious relevance as air humidity patterns shift.

The fungal records include one of the rarest fungi in Europe. Ascocoryne turficola, a saprotrophic discomycete of high conservation value that is listed in the Red Lists of most countries where it occurs, was found in October 2021 in Sphagnum mats of a light subalpine forest in the Alpi Graie of Val d’Aosta, at 2055 metres, alongside the rare sedge Carex pauciflora. The species grows on remains of Sphagnum and other wetland plants in strongly hydrated conditions, and its ascomata are waxy, turbinate apothecia that turn strongly gelatinous, cup-shaped or gibbose-cerebriform with age. The collection is only the second record of A. turficola from Italy since 1995, when it was reported from Trentino. The species has also recently been documented in Canada and West Siberia, hinting at a wider distribution than its Red List status implies.

Calabria emerged as the fungal epicentre of this contribution, with new regional records for Echinoderma jacobi, Hohenbuehelia atrocoerulea, Laccaria populina, Lasiosphaeria ovina, Leucocoprinus cygneus, Neodasyscypha cerina, Propolis farinosa, Psathyrella tephrophylla, Calycina claroflava and Ascocoryne turficola’s southern relatives. Several of these were found inside the Botanical Garden of the University of Calabria, a reminder that even managed green spaces can shelter undocumented diversity. E. jacobi produced lepiotoid basidiomes with broadly convex pilei 1.5 to 2.0 centimetres wide, uniformly covered by persistent brownish scales, with hyaline smooth ellipsoid spores measuring 4 to 5 by 2.5 to 3 micrometres. H. atrocoerulea sprouted from the dead timber of a bench, its kidney-shaped basidiomata bearing crowded whitish-ochraceous gills and fusoid cheilocystidia apically encrusted with evident metuloids. L. populina was confirmed not only morphologically but genetically: a newly generated nrITS sequence of the Italian voucher shared 350 of 350 nucleotides, a 100 percent match, with the sequence of the holotype, leaving no doubt about the identification.

The lichenological records concentrate on the Alps and Apennines, where three lichenicolous fungi of the genus Sclerococcum received particular attention. Sclerococcum athallinum, a minute discomycete specialized on the lichen Baeomyces rufus, is new to Veneto from the Carnic Alps at 2000 metres. Sclerococcum saxatile, known only in its teleomorphic state and growing on thalli of Pertusaria flavicans, is new to Val d’Aosta and confirmed for Piemonte after records dating back to the nineteenth century. Sclerococcum sphaerale, an anamorphic parasite of Lepra corallina, is new to Val d’Aosta, Piemonte, Lombardia and Toscana. These records trace a Holarctic distribution that thins towards the south, and the authors note that an earlier Ligurian record of S. saxatile actually refers to a different species, illustrating how host identity remains the decisive diagnostic character in this difficult group.

Other lichen records carry conservation weight. Thelopsis flaveola, an inconspicuous microlichen restricted to old-growth forest stands and included in the Italian Red List of epiphytic lichens as Critically Endangered, was found on the bark of Fagus sylvatica in a beech forest on Mount Timpone di Viggianello in Calabria at 1630 metres. Xylopsora caradocensis, listed as Endangered in the same Red List, is new to Emilia-Romagna from dead chestnut wood in the Modena Apennines. Lecanora albella, a crustose species with a marked affinity for smooth beech bark, is new to Abruzzo, and its apparent decline in Italy may be attributable to misidentification with the morphologically similar Glaucomaria subcarpinea. Candelariella coralliza, a boreal-montane to arctic-alpine species typically found on siliceous rocks and often on isolated boulders used as bird perches, is new to Basilicata, as are Catapyrenium daedalum and Cladonia coccifera from the same southern Apennine province.

Collectively, the contribution documents new records or confirmations for the algal genus Cladophoropsis, the bryophyte genera Bryum, Cinclidotus, Dicranella and Pulvigera, the fungal genera Ascocoryne, Calycina, Echinoderma, Hohenbuehelia, Laccaria, Lasiosphaeria, Leucocoprinus, Neodasyscypha, Propolis, Psathyrella and Sclerococcum, and the lichen genera Acarospora, Bryoplaca, Caloplaca, Candelariella, Catapyrenium, Cladonia, Lecanora, Lepra, Monerolechia, Mycobilimbia, Pertusaria, Pycnora, Spilonema, Thelopsis and Xylopsora. The series, now at its nineteenth instalment, operates as a distributed early-warning system for Italian cryptogamic diversity: each record is submitted electronically to regional coordinators for algae, bryophytes, fungi and lichens, with texts limited to 1000 characters. The result is a steadily accumulating dataset that turns casual field observations into verifiable range extensions, and it demonstrates that the frontiers of European botany now lie not in distant expeditions but in the wheat fields of Mantova, the torrents of Liguria, the peat bogs of the Graian Alps and the beech forests of Calabria.

Subject of Research: Notulae to the Italian flora of algae, bryophytes, fungi and lichens: 19

Article Title: Notulae to the Italian flora of algae, bryophytes, fungi and lichens: 19

Article References: Ravera, S., Vizzini, A., Cogoni, A., Totti, C., Aleffi, M., Benesperi, R., Bianchi, E., von Brackel, W., Buffa, G., Cancellieri, L., De Giuseppe, A. B., De Mei, S., Di Nuzzo, L., Dovana, F., Fačkovcová, Z., Fascetti, S., Gheza, G., Guazzini, L., Guttová, A., … Tretiach, M. (2025). Notulae to the Italian flora of algae, bryophytes, fungi and lichens: 19. Italian Botanist, 19, 119-142. https://doi.org/10.3897/italianbotanist.19.154467

Image Credits: AI Generated

DOI: 10.3897/italianbotanist.19.154467

Keywords: Notulae, Italian, flora, algae, bryophytes, fungi, lichens, scientific research