In recent years, Alectoria in the Acharian sense has been shown to contain several discordant elements, now recognized as separate genera, including Bryoria, Nodobryoria, Pseudephebe and Sulcaria. Here we describe a new segregate genus Gowardia. At present, Gowardia contains two species: G. arctica sp. nov. and G. nigricans (Ach.) comb. nov. (syn. Alectoria nigricans). In addition to several morphological and chemical characters, our decision to recognize Gowardia as distinct from Alectoria is supported by phylogenetic analysis based on combined ITS and GAPDH data. Gowardia arctica is known from Arctic regions of Canada and Russia, while G. nigricans has a wider range. Alectoria vancouverensis is documented from Finland, which is the first report of the species outside the Pacific coast of North America.