Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. South Auckland, W of Taupo. On Weinmannia racemosa, 14.v.1981, J.K. Bartlett – CHR 381115. Isotype – BM.

Descriptions : Flora (1985: 553) and Galloway (1997: 123–124).

N: Northland to Wellington. S: Nelson to Fiordland [map in Galloway (1997: 125, fig. 16)]. Among mosses on trunks and large branches of forest trees and shrubs (Coprosma, Nothofagus menziesii, N. solandri var. cliffortioides, Weinmannia racemosa) or occasionally on rocks, in humid, rather low-light habitats, s.l. to 1400 m. Commonly infected with species of the lichenicolous fungus * Plectocarpon sticticola (q.v.). Still poorly known and collected in New Zealand. Recently reported also from Argentina (Liberatore & Calvelo 2002: 118, fig. 4), but the material illustrated is referable to S. hypochra Vain. rather than to S. caliginosa.

Endemic

Illustration : Galloway (1997: 124, fig. 15).

Sticta caliginosa is characterised by: the corticolous (rarely saxicolous) habit; the distinctly stalked, palmate thallus; a cyanobacterial photobiont; the ragged, isidiate-phyllidiate margins; the dark, felted tomentum and large white cyphellae on the lower surface. It can be compared with the following palaeotropical taxa; S. brevipes (Müll.Arg.) Zahlbr. (smaller, more rounded, flabellate lobes which are markedly thickened and down-rolled at their apices); S. cyphellulata (Müll.Arg.) Hue (narrower, smaller, irregularly to subdichotomously branching lobes without phyllidia, a pale often glabrus lower surface with small, thelotremoid cyphellae); S. duplolimbata (Hue) Vain. (a smaller more irregular thallus with prominent, long, black marginal cilia projecting from among the isidia); and S. marginifera Mont. (smaller lobes with a pale, often glabrous lower surface and small, thelotremoid cyphellae, and prominent, stalked, marginal lobules).