It was originally described in the late 1920s by Swedish naturalist and part-time lichenologist A. H. Magnusson who misidentified it as Acarospora xanthophana, a species endemic to South America.

[2] The thallus (main body) can be rimose or areolate, and dispersed (spread out) or contiguous (grouped together) over several square centimeters.

[2] The upper surface of the fungi is generally pale-yellow in color, epruinose (no frosted appearance), and can be smooth or rough.

[2] The fungus produces small structures called apothecia which vary in size from 0.1–0.2 mm occasionally as much as 0.5 mm, forming isunken, punctiform (point or dot) discs which are typically black or reddish-brown but sometimes yellow in appearance due to the presence of crystals from rhizocarpic acid and epanorin; there is typically only one apothecium per areole.

The ascospores are variable in shape, but usually ellipsoidal with a size range of (3.0–)4.0–5.0(–7.0) × 1.0–1.5(–2.5) μm (numbers in parentheses denoting infrequent, outlier occurrences).