Flora of New Zealand Series

≡Placodium lecanorinum C.Knight, Trans. Linn. Soc. ser. 2, Bot. 1: 282 (1887).

≡Ricasolia lecanorina (C.Knight) Müll.Arg., Bull. Herb. Boissier 2, App. 1: 47 (1894).

≡Placolecania lecanorina (C.Knight) Zahlbr. in A. Engler and K. Prantl., Nat. Pflanzenfam. I Teil, Abt. I: 205 (1907).

≡Solenopsora lecanorina (C.Knight) Zahlbr., Cat. lich. univ. 5 (5): 755 (1928).

Holotype: New Zealand. Sine loco [probably Wellington], Charles Knight – WELT L006279 [original illustration in WELT L006280]. Isotype – BM ex Herb. J.M. Crombie [formerly as lectotype of Placodium lecanorinum - fide P. James in Galloway (1983a: 193). When Peter James lectotypified Placodium lecanorinum on Crombie's specimen sent to him by Charles Knight, the original material of Knight's was unavailable for study. Knight's original specimen and his pencil illustration of asci and ascospores, published in Knight (1877 see above), is preserved in his herbarium in Wellington. It is thus correctly holotype and James's 1983 lectotypification is therefore overruled].

Description : Flora (1985: 177).

N: Northland (Little Barrier I.), South Auckland (Mangaotaki Valley near Pio Pio), Wellington. S: Nelson (near Reefton), Westand (Fox River, Paringa River, Haast River), Otago (Ross Creek), Southland (Wilmot Pass). On damp, streamside and riverbed rocks and stones and on clay banks (both maritime and inland), commonly associating with species of Placopsis (especially P. illita, P. rhodophthalma, P. salazina), Stereocaulon colensoi, S. corticatulum, S. ramulosum and tufts of Trentepohlia.

Endemic

Illustration : Knight (1877: pl. XXXVIII, fig. 15 – as Placodium lecanorinum).

Gyalidea lecanorina is characterised by: the saxicolous habit; the thin, continuous, minutely warty or plicate–rugose, olivaceous thallus, spreading in patches, 2–4.5 cm diam., often among mosaics of Placopsis; the scattered, slightly immersed to sessile, yellow-brown, translucent apothecia with somewhat blackened margins; ellipsoidal, (1–2–)3-septate ascospores with pointed apices, 12–15 × 4–4.5 μm, slightly constricted at the septa, the contents distinctly vacuolate.