Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. South Auckland. Mamaku near Rotorua. On Kunzea [Leptospermum ]ericoides, 14.iii.1981, J.K. Bartlett – CHR 381200. Isotype – BM.

Descriptions : Flora (1985: 560); Galloway (1997: 153–154).

N: Northland (Three Kings Is) to Wellington (Kapiti I.). S: Nelson (Kaihoka Lakes) to Southland (Invercargill) [map in Galloway (1997: 154, fig. 36)]. Mainly northern in coastal forest or lowland forest on trees and shrubs; also on rocks and soil, s.l. to 1200 m. It may also occasionally be infected with galls of the lichenicolous fungi * Plectocarpon sticticola (q.v.) and * Unguiculariopsis triregia (q.v.).

Endemic

Exsiccati : Moberg (1994a: No 145).

Illustration : Galloway (1997: 153, fig. 35).

Sticta squamata is characterised by: the corticolous (rarely saxicolous or terricolous) habit; a green photobiont, tough, rigid, brittle, rather irregular lobes, with distinctive, squamiform phyllidia often densely developed at lobe margins, and characteristic waxy, yellow-orange apothecial discs. It is separated from S. martinii by its characteristic squamiform, imbricate isidia that are never white-pruinose, by the upper surface which is never minutely white-papillate or spotted, and by the orange-yellow apothecia. A related Australian taxon, S. baileyi D.J.Galloway (Galloway 1998e: 122–123), differs in having mainly flat, flabellate lobes with marginal and laminal phyllidia, which are here and there white-tomentose; dark-brown apothecial discs; a dark red-brown hypothecium; a shorter, pale orange-yellow hymenium; and longer, broader ascospores [(42–)44.5–50(–53) × 8.5–11 μm].