Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. Westland, Punakaiki Blowholes, on limestone rocks at roadside, 16.i.1927, G. Einar & Greta Du Rietz 1618 : 4 – S.

Description : Flora (1985: 141).

S: Nelson (Cobb Valley and Takaka Hills), Marlborough (Chalk Ra.), Westland (Punakaiki), Canterbury (Ram Hill Lake Ohau), Otago (Karitane, Port Chalmers), Southland (Springhills, Shark's Tooth, Clifden), both east and west of the Main Divide, coastal and inland, saxicolous, terricolous or muscicolous, often on limestone, s.l. to 1300 m. Known also from New South Wales in Australia (Degelius 1989; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Australasian

Illustrations : Degelius (1974: 83, fig. 21); Malcolm & Malcolm (2000: 110).

Collema novozelandicum is characterised by: the saxicolous (basicolous) habit; the small to medium (1–4 cm diam.) thallus, of repeatedly furcate lobes, with granular to squamiform isidia, forming an areolate-diffract crust centrally; numerous, crowded, subglobose to sessile apothecia, with dark-red, epruinose discs, smooth to idiate thalline margins; and submuriform to muriform (3–6 × 1–2 septa) ascospores, 20–30 × 9–10.5(–14) μm.