Flora of New Zealand Series

Description : Thallus ±subsquamulose, ±closely adnate, 0.2–1 cm wide or coalescing to 5 cm diam., in a ±diffract, areolate crust, 35–75 μm thick, blue-green, translucent when wet, dull lead-grey, brownish grey or somewhat blackened when dry, spongy when wet, brittle and friable when dry. Lobes rounded to narrowly oblong, flat to concave, ±undulate, (0.2–)0.5–1.5 mm wide, margins sinuous, wavy, pectinate–ragged, often lobulate, sometimes erose, lobules usually narrow–linear to subterete, ±branched, to 0.2 mm tall. Upper surface smooth to roughened, matt, without isidia or wrinkles. Lower surface smooth, naked or with minute scattered rhizines, concolorous with upper surface or paler. Apothecia laminal, sessile, 0.5–1.5(–2) mm diam., thalline exciple finally recurved, cream, occasionally with fringing thalline squamules, disc concave to strongly convex, excluding exciple, pale-brown to dark red-brown. Ascospores ellipsoidal, submuriform with 3 transverse septa and one longitudinal septum, both apices rounded, or one rounded and one slightly pointed, (16–)17.5–20(–22.5) × 7–9 μm.

N: Northland (Three Kings Is to Onerahi), Taranaki (New Plymouth). St: (Glory Cove). Among mosses and on bark in northern coastal forest N of latitude 36º16's, and in coastal forest in Paterson Inlet, Stewart I. (lat. 46º58's), s.l. to 100 m (map in Galloway 1999: 346, fig. 15). The southern population is associated with the lichens Leptogium aucklandicum, Nephroma australe, Pseudocyphellari glabra, Sticta martinii and species of Collema and Psoroma. The species is still poorly collected and understood in New Zealand. Known also from Australia (Verdon 1992a).

Australasian

Leptogium pecten is characterised by: the corticolous habit; the subsquamulose thallus and pectinate margins. Mature apothecia have strongly convex discs and mature ascospores have rounded apices (Verdon et al. 1996). It is distinguished from L. crispatellum (the spores of the two species are virtually identical) by the smaller, subsquamulose lobes and the absence of isidia. Known also in Australia from SE New South Wales, Victoria and Tasmania (Wilson 1891, 1893; Verdon 1990, 1992a; McCarthy 2003c, 2006). First recorded from northern New Zealand by Verdon et al. (1996) who discussed a specimen collected from Mangonui (lat. 35ºS) by the late John Bartlett.