Flora of New Zealand Series

Parmelia sieberiana Laurer, Linnaea 2: 38 (1827).

Thallus lobate, subfruticose, forming small rosettes or pulvinate clumps, 1-3 cm diam., to 5 mm tall, corticolous. Lobes stellate-radiate, rather flattened, 1-5 mm long and 0.3-0.8 mm wide, and 0.1-0.15 mm thick, sparingly branched, pale orange-yellow, flat to canaliculate above, loosely attached, ascending or erect, with scattered, concolorous marginal and occasionally laminal fibrils, 1-1.5 mm long, a few whitish rhizines on lower surface, without soredia. Apothecia sessile at first, at length pedicellate, laminal, (0.5-)1.2-5 mm diam., plane or subconvex and ± undulate, disc concave to plane or subconvex, without cilia, matt, darker than thallus, margins thin, entire, inflexed at first, becoming thinner, ± crenulate with age. Ascospores broadly ellipsoid, 13-15 × 6-7 µm.

N: Auckland (Bombay, on gravestone). S: Westland (Toaroha River), Canterbury (Temuka), Southland (Lake Wapiti). On shrubs, rarely on stone. Very much undercollected.

Australasian

Murray (loc. cit., p. 207) incorrectly names this species T. spinosus, a Tasmanian-Eastern Australian plant which does not occur in New Zealand.