Flora of New Zealand Series

Description : Thallus ±orbicular or spreading in irregular patches, closely to loosely attached, muscicolous, corticolous, pliable when wet, brittle when dry, 1–3(–4) cm diam. Lobes rounded, discrete to crowded, to 5 mm diam. at margins, becoming complex-folded to crowded centrally. Margins entire, to ragged–lacerate, ±phyllidiate. Upper surface matt, delicately wrinkled–striate (×10 lens), blue-black when wet, lead-grey when dry, phyllidiate. Phyllidia marginal and laminal, minutely lobulate, simple at first, becoming branched–coralloid, to 0.2 mm tall, often densely crowded and forming a ±diffract crust centrally. Lower surface naked, concolorous with upper surface or paler, noticeably wrinkled (×10 lens). Apothecia not seen.

N: Northland (Three Kings Is to Little Barrier I.), South Auckland (Hunua Ra.; Pio Pio). An epiphyte of lowland and coastal forest in northern New Zealand between latitudes 34º10's and 38º28's, though is still very poorly collected and understood in New Zealand (map in Galloway 1999: 350, fig. 17). It is an epiphyte of Kunzea ericoides and Phyllocladus trichomanoides. Known also from the Philippines and NE Queensland (Verdon 1992a: 191; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Palaeotropical

Leptogium propaguliferum is characterised by: the corticolous habit; medium-sized to rather small lobes with a distinctively wrinkled or wrinkled–striate upper surface (×10 lens). It is distinguished from the superficially similar L. austroamericanum by having flattened phyllidia and not terete isidia.