Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. South Auckland, Mangaotaki Reserve, King Country near Pio Pio. On twigs of Griselinia littoralis in deep shade, 9 June, 1978. DJ. Galloway, CHR 343163! Isotype in BM.

Thallus lobate-foliose, spreading, in entangled clones, 5-15(-30) cm diam., loosely attached, corticolous. Lobes linear-elongate, rather narrow, 3-12 mm wide, expanding towards apices, ± subdichotomously branching, complex, imbricate centrally, discrete, ± subascendent at apices, margins entire, slightly thickened below, occasionally with rounded to elongate white pseudocyphellae, truncate or furcate, at apices. Upper surface smooth, glabrous, even or undulate, rarely very shallowly faveolate, ridges smooth not distinct, without isidia, pseudocyphellae or soredia, conspicuously and irregularly white-maculate (×10 lens), dark slate-grey or bluish-grey when wet, pale greenish-grey suffused brownish when dry. Medulla white. Photobiont blue-green. Lower surface pale brownish-pink, wrinkled-striate centrally, ± evenly tomentose to margins, tomentum pale, whitish, short, even, lobe apices sometimes glabrous, whitish, wrinkled-bullate, shining. Pseudocyphellae round to irregular, common, plane, intense white, 0.1-1.2 mm diam., conspicuous. Apothecia very rare, marginal, subpedicellate, 0.5-2.0 mm diam., disc glossy, coriaceous, dark chesnut-brown to black, epruinose, margins pale pinkish-brown, corrugate-striate to verrucose, ± inflexed and obscuring disc at first, becoming ± coronate or denticulate to excluded at maturity, thalline exciple coarsely verrucose-scabrid, minutely tomentose, whitish to dark brownish-pink or red-brown. Epithecium 13-22 µm thick, yellow-brown, of thickened, conglutinate tips of paraphyses. Hymenium colourless, 40-65 µm tall. Hypothecium pale yellowish-brown, 17-30 µm thick. Asci and ascopores not seen. Chemistry: 7β-acetoxyhopane-22-ol and hopane 15α,22-diol.

N: South Auckland (Kauaeranga River to King Country), Hawke's Bay (near Lake Tutira, Napier - Taupo Road), Wellington (Erua Swamp). S: Nelson (Cobb Ridge), Canterbury (Mt Sinclair Reserve, Banks Peninsula), Southland (Forest Hill). Rather rare and local in occurence in habitats of high humidity in moderate to dense shade, mainly lowland.

Endemic

P. murrayi is closely related chemically and morphologically to P. rufovirescens and the two species form photosymbiodemes (Renner and Galloway loc. cit. ). When growing independently it is separable from P. rufovirescens in the smoother, undulate, very seldom faveolate lobes which are expanded at the apices, the leaden-grey colour when wet because of the presence of a blue-green photobiont, the consistent development of a ± uniform tomentum on the lower surface, and the dark brown to black apothecial discs with corrugate-striate or verrucose margins. In P. rufovirescens tomentum on the lower surface is very rudimentary and ± restricted to central parts of mature lobes, the margins and apices being regularly glabrous, white and shining. The pseudocyphellae of P. rufovirescens are also smaller, more pock-like and scattered and not conspicuous and large as they are in P. murrayi. P. murrayi is named for the late Dr James Murray of Otago University's Chemistry Department, who first became interested in New Zealand's lichens through his chemical studies in Pseudocyphellaria. He was engaged in monographing Sticta and Pseudocyphellaria at the time of his death (1961), and made the first collection of P. murrayi at Forest Hill, Southland, in January 1957.