Fouragea

Fouragea is a genus of lichen-forming fungi in the family Opegraphaceae.

The genus was originally circumscribed by Italian botanist Vittore Benedetto Antonio Trevisan de Saint-Léon in 1880,[3] for the species Opegrapha filicina, first described by Camille Montagne.

Several features distinguished this lichen from the usual, bark-dwelling Opegrapha species: its slender ascocarps, which are a result of its foliicolous lifestyle, the absence of a dark excipulum at the base, and the preference for Phycopeltis as a photobiont instead of Trentepohlia.

The genus was reinstated in 2014 to contain foliicolous (leaf-dwelling) Opegrapha species, following a molecular phylogenetics-led reorganisation of the order Arthoniales.

[4] Prior molecular work had already demonstrated that the foliicolous species, O. filicina and O. viridistellata, formed an independent lineage at the base of the Opegraphaceae.