Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. South Auckland, Tauranga, on mangrove, Filhol – CHR 162173.

Description : Flora (1985: 568).

Chemistry : Chemosyndrome A, containing parietin (major), emodin, parietinic acid, fallacinal and teloschistin (Søchting & Frödén 2002).

N: Northland (Whangarei, Leigh, Waiwera), Auckland (New Lynn), South Auckland (Thames, Tauranga), Taranaki (Motunui, nr Stratford). In mainly northern coastal habitats, growing on both native (Avicennia marina, Metrosideros excelsa) and introduced trees (Acer pseudoplatanus, Prunus). It is a light-demanding species commonly associating with other species of Teloschistes and Xanthoria, Ramalina celastri and Rimelia reticulata. Also known from Australia where it is recorded from Queensland and New South Wales (Filson 1996; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Australasian

Illustration : Filson (1969: 109, pl. 12).

Teloschistes xanthorioides is characterised by: the corticolous habit; a distinctly pulvinate thallus [Murray (1960b: 209) commented "the new species looks very like a large Xanthoria polycarpa"], formed of decumbent to ascending, dorsiventral lobes 0.5–1.5 mm long and to 1 mm wide, without marginal or laminal cilia but with scattered to ±dense white rhizines below (especially towards apices of lobes); lobes that are corticate on both surfaces, pale grey-green to yellowish white above and white below and without soredia (they are often ±obscured by the abundantly developed apothecia); apothecia that are shortly pedicellate, 1–3(–6) mm diam., with a yellow, to bright-orange disc and persistent, well-developed verrucose or crenulate margins, concolorous with thallus and without fibrils; a thalline exciple that is smooth to roughly verrucose, concolorous with thallus, and occasionally develops thick, white tufted cilia below/underneath the disc, that often fuse with adjacent discs obscuring the thallus below; pycnidia that are usually subterminal, immersed to slightly protruding; and bifusiform conidia. T. xanthorioides is a rather constant species throughout its range in New Zealand, varying only in the size of the pulvinate thalli, 1–3(–5) cm diam., and of apothecia 1–3(–6) mm diam., and in the colour of the lobes, which is generally a pale greyish green or pale-grey in shaded habitats, to whitish yellow (never orange or orange-red) in high-light situations.