Porina silvatica
Description : Thallus crustose, on bark or overgrowing bryophytes, continuous to sparingly cracked, pale-brown to pale greenish brown, matt, smooth to minutely uneven, 20–40 μm thick, ecorticate, without a prothallus. Perithecia superficial, hemispherical to subglobose, slightly attenuated at base, usually at least partly covered by a thalline layer 15–30 μm thick, 0.4–0.7 mm diam., orange-brown to reddish brown; apex rounded; ostiole inconspicuous. Involucrellum contiguous with exciple and extending to exciple base level, 40– 70 μm thick, without photobiont cells, K+ reddish brown. Exciple 20 μm thick, pale yellow-brown. Centrum 0.35–0.5 mm diam., globose to depressed-ovate. Periphyses absent. Paraphyses 1– 1.5 μm thick. Asci elongate-cylindrical or elongate-fusiform, 185–212 × 20–27 μm, with rounded to truncate ends. Ascospores (7–)9–11(–15)-septate, elongate-fusiform or elongate-cylindrical, straight, curved or sigmoid, with rounded to subacute apices, irregularly biseriate in ascus, without a gelatinous sheath, contents clear to coarsely granular, (54.5–)65(–88) × (6.5–)8.5(–9.5) μm. Pycnidia scattered, 0.12–0.18 mm diam., hemispherical, concolorous with thallus to orange-brown. Conidia not seen.
N: Northland (Onerahi) on bark (McCarthy 1993c: 12). S: Nelson (Fringed Hill). On siliceous rocks. Known also from Tasmania (McCarthy & Kantvilas 1993b: 145; McCarthy 2001f: 144; 2003c; 2003d) where it grows on bark and corticolous bryophytes.
Australasian
Illustrations : McCarthy & Kantvilas (1993b: 141, fig. 2 E, F); Malcolm & Malcolm (2000: 79); McCarthy (2001f: 149, fig. 36.).
Porina silvatica is characterised by: the corticolous or muscicolous habit; the distinctive large, prominent orange-brown to reddish brown perithecia, and elongate, multiseptate (7–15-septate) ascospores, (54.5–)65(–88) × (6.5–)8.5 (–9.5) μm.
