Cladonia uncialis

Cladonia uncialis is a fruticose, cup lichen in the family Cladoniaceae, known in North America as the thorn Cladonia or thorn cup lichen. Carl Linnaeus first described it as a new species in 1753, and Friedrich Heinrich Wiggers transferred it to the genus Cladonia in 1780. It is host to the lichenicolous fungus Lichenopeltella uncialicola, which takes its name from the lichen. In 2026 a chromosome-level genome assembly was published for its fungal partner, the mycobiont: 43.49 Mb in total, with 39.25 Mb anchored into 28 chromosomes. The same study recovered part of the genome of the algal partner, identified 31 metagenome-assembled genomes in the lichen's microbial community, which was dominated by Ascomycota, Pseudomonadota and Bacteroidota, and placed C. uncialis as sister to C. borealis.