Flora of New Zealand Series

Description : Flora (1985: 474).

Chemistry : TLC−, all reactions negative.

N: Taranaki (Mt Taranaki), Wellington (Tararua Ra.). S: Nelson (Mt Peel, St Arnaud Ra., Lake Rotoiti, Crimea Ra.), Westland (Franz Josef Glacier), Canterbury (Nina Valley, Arthur's Pass, Woolshed Hill, Craigieburn Ra., Upper Godley Valley, Mt Peel, Four Peaks Ra.), Otago (Forgotten River, French Ridge Matukituki Valley, Dredgeburn, Rockburn Gorge, Humboldt Mts, Dart Valley, Kea Basin, the Remarkables, Mt Pisa, Dunstan Mts, Old Man Ra., Hawkdun Mts, Rock & Pillar Ra., Umbrella Mts, Silver Peaks, Swampy Hill, Flagstaff, Maungatua), Southland (Homer, Lake Thomson, Mt Clerke Resolution I., Dusky Sound, Lake Manapouri, Borland Saddle, Hokonui Hills). St: (Mt Anglem, Mt Allen). A: (Eden Ridge, Bivouac Hill). C: A subalpine to high-alpine species of characteristic mat-forming habit, often among mosses on soil, in drainage cracks, stream beds and lake shores and in ±damp crevices in fellfield. Known also from Australia where it is rare (Jørgensen & Galloway 1992b: 282; McCarthy 2003c, 2006), from southern South America (Henssen et al. 1983; Calvelo 1992: 51; Galloway & Quilhot 1999; Liberatore & Calvelo 2002) and recently recorded from the mountains of Transvaal in South Africa (Jørgensen 2003a: 17).

Austral

Illustrations : Henssen et al. (1983: 32, fig. 1; 33, fig. 2; 35, fig. 3; 36, fig. 4; 37, fig. 5); Calvelo (1992: 49, figs 1G, H); Malcolm & Galloway (1997: 108); Malcolm & Malcolm (2000: 27); Lumbsch et al. (2001: 25).

Psoroma fruticulosum is characterised by: the terricolous habit; the squamulose to small-laciniate thallus forming dense swards or cushions to 8 cm diam., and without a marginal prothallus; thalline squamules that are laciniate, erect, congested, laterally compressed, ±spathulate apically, and with a distinctive roughened surface, scabrid to areolate, and brownish green to tawny yellow or red-brown to somewhat blackened in colour; cephalodia are marginal at the base of laciniae; apothecia are often large, 3–10 mm diam., and expanded above tips of laciniae, the disc plane to undulate to deeply cupulate, red-brown to brown-black, the margins being subentire to verrucose or crenate-striate; and with ellipsoidal ascospores, 18–23 × 6–10 μm, with a 3-μm-thick perispore.