Flora of New Zealand Series

Type: New Zealand. North Island, sine loco. W. Colenso, ex Herb. Babington, VER - not seen. Material in BM.

Thallus crustose, thin or thick, smooth and shining or granular-warted or nodular to minutely subsquamulose, ashy white to pale greenish-grey, to 6 cm diam., corticolous. Apothecia common, lecanorine, scattered or crowded, rounded to irregular-indented, sessile or constricted at base, to 3 mm wide, disc concave at first, becoming plane or strongly convex with age, scarlet, to pale flesh-pink, matt, often ± finely white-pruinose, margins thick, persistent, concolorous with thallus, entire or crenulate with rather blunt apices, 1-5(-8)-septate, (19-)25-40(-45) × 3-8 µm. Chemistry: Atranorin and unidentified compounds.

N: Wellington, south of volcanic plateau, but still very much under-collected. S: Nelson to Southland, coastal and inland more common in drier, eastern areas s.l. to 1100 m, corticolous, rarely lignicolous.

Endemic

H. babingtonii is a rather polymorphic species easily recognised by the frequent, bright scarlet to pinkish apothecia [a good coloured illustration appears in Martin and Child "Lichens of New Zealand" (1972), p. 113, incorrectly labelled as H. puniceum] and the ashy white thallus. It colonises a variety of trees and shrubs (it is often found on Discaria and Hoheria) and appears to be more common east of the Main Divide in South I. than elsewhere. It is still very much undercollected in North I. and is not known from Stewart I. It is common and prominent as an epiphyte of: Cytisus, Discaria, Hoheria, Hymenanthera, Juglans, Malus, Melicope, Pittosporum, Populus, Ribes, Prunus, Salix and Sophora.