Flora of New Zealand Series

Type : Ramalodium succulentum Nyl.

Description : Thallus homoiomerous, membranaceous, lobate, foliose, or pulvinate-fruticose, cartilaginous when dry, gelatinous when moist, olive or violet-grey. Lobes broad or narrow, smooth, wrinkled, ridged or veined. Upper surface ecorticate or with precortical structures formed of periclinally oriented hyphae. Lower surface naked or partly tomentose. Medullary hyphae thin, forming a loosely branched reticulum, or orientated horizontally at centre of thallus. Photobiont cyanobacterial, Nostoc, in chains aggregated in outer parts of thallus, cells green or violet. Ascomata apothecia, marginal or laminal, disciform or globose; disc dark-red, red-brown or black; proper exciple present; thalline exciple absent. Proper exciple pigmented or unpigmented, annular at first, becoming gradually a cupuliform layer at maturity; hyphae reticulately connected, walls ±strongly gelatinised, cell lumina rounded, angular or elongated. Asci cylindrical, walls I+ blue, 8-spored (or fewer), uniseriate. Ascospores simple, colourless, smooth or with a warty epispore. Conidiomata pycnidia, immersed, ±globose, conidiophores branched and short-celled. Conidia bacillar, produced terminally and laterally.

Ramalodium, included in the family Collemataceae (Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005), contains six species and is distributed in the Pacific Basin in Japan, New Caledonia, Australia and southern South America (Henssen 1965, 1979). Two species were recently described from New Zealand collections (Henssen 1999).