Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. North I., South Auckland, Red Mercury I., on tea-tree bark [Leptospermum scoparium], viii.1971, B.W. & G.C. Hayward H 40.4 – AK 161261.

Description : Thallus orbicular, 3–7(–12) cm diam., corticolous, loosely to firmly attached from margins to centre, or with margins ascending. Lobes rounded to irregularly laciniate, 2–10(–20) mm wide, 4–25 mm long, discrete, contiguous or ±complex-imbricate and clustered. Margins sinuous, ascending, very irregular, delicately to coarsely crenate-lacerate, slightly thickened below, or with clustered soredia and ±grey-white, erose below. Upper surface dark grey-blue or glaucous-blue to blue-black, darker at lobe apices or with a livid brownish tinge when moist, olivaceous-brownish to glaucous-yellow or isabelline, dark greyish at margins when dry, plane or shallowly undulate, ±wrinkled-faveolate at apices, elsewhere conspicuously punctate-impressed, here and there with minute, pale-buff papillae (×10 lens), matt, smooth or appearing slightly arachnoid in parts, rather coriaceous when dry, soft and flabby when moist, sorediate, maculate, without phyllidia or pseudocyphellae. Maculae minute, scattered, irregular, whitish buff, most noticeable and in reticulate patterns towards lobe apices, occasionally more extensive photobiont-free patches centrally. Soredia coarsely granular to crowded-pseudoisidiate (×10 lens), scattered in efflorescent clusters, 0.5 mm diam., often dense and spreading, delimited in round to irregular laminal soralia, or in ± sinuous, linear, marginal soralia, or coalescing and forming broad areas of sorediate to pseudoisidiate crust, soredia dark brownish blue, glaucous greyish often eroding white. Medulla white. Photobiont cyanobacterial. Lower surface bullate to irregularly undulate–wrinkled, pale-buff or brownish and ±glabrous in a narrow, marginal zone, elsewhere evenly and often densely tomentose, red-brown to brown-black, tomentum short and velvety near margins, long and woolly centrally. Pseudocyphellae white, conspicuous, well-delimited from tomentum, common centrally, rare marginally, round to irregular, 0.1–2 mm diam., with a raised, pale-buff, glabrous margin, decorticate area concave to convex, granular. Apothecia rare or absent, marginal and laminal, solitary or in groups (2–7), sessile, to supedicellate, rounded, irregular or ±distorted through mutual pressure, (0.1–)0.5–2.5(–3) mm diam., concave at first, becoming plane to convex at maturity, disc pale-yellow or orange-brown to dark red-brown, glossy at first, then matt and slightly roughened with age, epruinose, exciple pale-buff to brownish, translucent when moist, finely to coarsely scabrid-verrucose. Ascospores fusiform-ellipsoidal, apices pointed, yellow-brown, 1-septate, unthickened (27.5–)30–32(–34) × 6–7 μm.

Chemistry : 7β-acetoxyhopan-22-ol, hopane-7β,22-diol (tr.), hopane-15α,22-diol.

N: Northland (Radar Bush, Bay of Islands, Poor Knights Is, Rakitu I.) to Auckland (Rangitoto I.) [map in Galloway (1988a: 161, fig. 77)]. An epiphyte of bark and twigs of trees and shrubs (Cordyline australis, Kunzea ericioides, Metrosideros excelsa) in northern coastal forest and grassland. Known also from NE Australia and Norfolk I. (Galloway 1994b; Galloway et al. 2001b; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Palaeotropical

Illustration : Galloway (1988a: fig. 76).

Pseudocyphellaria haywardiorum is characterised by: rounded to irregularly laciniate lobes; coarsely granular to pseudoisidiate, laminal and marginal soralia; a conspicuously punctate-impressed upper surface; a white medulla; a cyanobacterial photobiont; a densely and evenly red-brown to brown-black tomentose lower surface with scattered, prominent, well-delimited white pseudocyphellae; and a two-hopane chemistry.