Flora of New Zealand Series

Lecanora perrugosa Nyl., Flora 48: 338 (1865).

Squamaria thaumasta Stirton, Rep. Trans. Glasgow Soc. Fld Nat. 1: 17 (1873).

Holotype: New Zealand. Otago. Dunedin. W. Lauder Lindsay, H-NYL 23872!

Fig. 6

Thallus effigurate, lobate, orbicular to spreading, very closely attached, to 8 cm diam., saxicolous, prothallus absent. Marginal lobes discrete, expanded, to 3 mm long and 1.5 mm broad, irregularly branched, rounded or somewhat cuneate at apices. Upper surface entirely verrucose-papillate, cracked, with cracks 0.2-0.3 mm wide, delineating angular areolae to 1.3 mm diam., verruculae crowded, hemispherical, to 0.5 mm diam., borne on a continuous thalline substratum, matt, naked or rarely slightly white-pruinose, variable in colour, creamish, yellow-grey, brown-grey to olive-brown or brown-black, without isidia or soredia. Cephalodia scattered, sessile, flattened, suborbicular, to 2.5 mm diam., or effigurate, radially cracked, to 3 mm diam., or rarely warted-glomerulate and not effigurate, to 3.5 mm diam., yellowish- to red-brown, matt. Apothecia scattered, subpedicellate, rounded, to 1.5 mm diam., thalline margin prominent, entire or subcrenulate, disc plane, brown-pink or brown to black, matt, epruinose. Hymenium 100-200 µm tall, pale yellowish or yellow-brown in upper part. Paraphyses moderately thickened at apices. Hypothecium colourless or pale yellowish. Ascospores uniseriate, ellipsoid, 15-21 × 7-10 µm. Pycnidia immersed in thalline warts, ostioles punctiform, brown-black 0.1-0.2 mm diam. Conidia filiform curved or straight, 18-24 × 0.5 µm. Chemistry: Cortex K+ yellowish, C+ rose; medulla K+ yellow or -, C+ rose, Pd+ or -.

N: Rangitoto I., to Wellington. S: Nelson to Fiordland. St: A: C: Coastal, subalpine to alpine rocks, often growing among mosses and with species of Stereocaulon and Trentepohlia. A very variable species and probably the most widely distributed dark-coloured Placopsis, being particularly common on rocks on stream beds in eastern South I.

Austral