Flora of New Zealand Series

Description : Thallus closely to loosely attached centrally, often loosely straggling, to ±pulvinate, 2–4(–6) cm diam., 150–550 μm thick, pale malachite-green to blue-green, ±translucent when wet, pale-grey to blue to ±red-brown or dark-brown to ±blackened in exposed forms when dry. Lobes rounded to oblong, 2–7 mm wide. Margins entire, slightly thickened and ±inrolled, lobulate or ±isidiate. Upper surface strongly wrinkled when dry, weakly wrinkled when wet, lobulate, occasionally isidiate. Wrinkles anastomosing, ±periclinal at or near lobe apices. Isidia flattened to ±inflated, to 1 mm tall, concolorous with thallus. Lower surface concolorous with upper surface or paler, conspicuously wrinkled–ridged, here and there with ±compacted bundles of whitish rhizines. Apothecia laminal, occasionally developed near margins on upturned lower surface of lobes, adnate to sessile, widely scattered to closely clustered (0.5–)1–3 mm diam., disc plane to concave, pale-brown, thalline exciple ±periclinally wrinkled, lobulate or isidiate, concolorous with thallus, sometimes with short, white basal hairs., Ascospores 3–5 rarely to 8 per ascus, submuriform, ovoid, apices rounded, 25–30(–32.5) × 10–12.5(–15) μm.

N: Northland (Warawara Ra.). S: Otago (Old Man Ra., Potters). On soil, 500–1200 m (map in Galloway 1999: 350, fig. 17). L. victorianum is still very poorly collected in New Zealand, though is probably more widespread than records show. In the alpine grassland site on the Old Man Ra. at Potters, where it forms large clumbs on damp soil beneath mountain daisies and grasses, it associates with a range of high-alpine lichens including: Arthrorhaphis citrinella, Bellemerea alpina, Brigantiaea fuscolutea, Cladonia bimberiensis, Lecanora epibryon ssp. broccha, Lepraria incana, Leproloma vouauxii, Omphalina alpina, Peltigera dolichorhiza, Placopsis trachyderma, Psoroma hirsutulum, P. paleaceum, Pseudocyphellaria degelii, Rinodina conradii, Sticta martinii, Tetramelas confusus and Trapelia coarctata. Known also from Victoria and Tasmania in Australia (Verdon 1990, 1992a; McCarthy 2003c, 2006) where it occurs in montane rainforest.

Australasian

Leptogium victorianum is characterised by: the terricolous habit; the pulvinate thallus; the strongly wrinkled upper surface; the lobulate to isidiate margins; inflated isidia on the upper surface; the lobulate or isidiate thalline exciple; and submuriform ascospores, 25–32.5 × 10–15 μm.