Pseudocyphellaria ardesiaca
Holotype: New Zealand. South I., Canterbury, Boyle River near Lewis Pass, on bark of Leptospermum, on terrace overlooking Boyle Lodge, 9.i.1979, D.J. Galloway s.n. – CHR 343237. Isotype – BM.
Descriptions : Flora (1985: 426). See also Galloway (1988a: 61), Galloway et al. (2001b: 50).
Chemistry : Pulvinic acid, pulvinic dilactone, calycin, 2α,3β-diacetoxystictane, 2α,3β-diacetoxystictane-22-ol, stictane-3β,22α-diol (tr.), 2α-acetoxystictane-3β,22α-diol, 3β-acetoxystictane-2α,22α-diol and stictane-2α,3β,22α-triol.
N: South Auckland (Pio Pio) E to Lake Waikaremoana and S to Tararua Ra. S: Mountains of NW Nelson and S mainly east of the Main Divide from Lewis Pass to Mt Peel in S Canterbury and the Routeburn in Otago [map in Galloway (1988a: 63, fig. 18)]. On bark or among mosses on trunks of forest trees including Kunzea ericoides, Leptospermum scoparium, Nothofagus menziesii, N. solandri var. cliffortioides and Phyllocladus alpinus; commonly at treeline and in scrub. Known also from Victoria and Tasmania (Kantvilas et al. 1985; Filson 1996; Galloway 1988a: 61–64; Galloway et al. 2001b; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).
Australasian
Illustrations : Galloway (1988a: 62, fig. 17); Kantvilas & Jarman (1999: 111); Malcolm & Malcolm (2000: 61); Flora of Australia 58A (2001: xviii, pl. 29).
Pseudocyphellaria ardesiaca is characterised by: a corticolous habit; orbicular thalli with short, rounded, convex, somewhat scalloped lobes with sinuous slightly ascending margins that are often conspicuously sorediate; a smooth, occasionally scabrid-areolate upper surface that is commonly reticulate-maculate (×10 lens), and with scattered, ulcerose soralia; a yellow medula; a cyanobacterial photobiont; a pale-yellow or brownish lower surface with a short, even, rather velvety tomentum, and scattered yellow pseudocyphellae; and a chemistry dominated by pigments and stictane triterpenoids.
