Flora of New Zealand Series

Type : Lecania fuscella (Schaer.) A.Massal. [=Lecanora pallida var. fuscella Schaer.]

Description : Thallus thin to thick, crustose, continuous or of scattered granules, warts or areolae, rarely papillate or lobed. Upper surface smooth to warted–papillate, occasionally with soralia, or minute granular outgrowths (goniocysts), grey-white, yellowish to brown-black, with or without pruina. Photobiont green, chlorococcoid. Ascomata apothecia, sessile, urceolate to plane or convex, disc pale-brown to brown-black, sometimes pruinose. Thalline exciple generally present, rarely excluded. Hymenium colourless, I+ blue. Hypothecium colourless or pale. Hamathecium of paraphyses, simple, thick, conglutinate, sometimes moniliform or uppermost apical cells with a dark-pigmented cap. Asci 8(–12–16)-spored, Bacidia -type. Ascospores (0–)1–3(–7)-septate, oval to elongate–ellipsoidal, thin-walled, lacking a perispore. Conidiomata pycnidia, common in corticolous taxa, rare in saxicolous species. Conidia curved to sigmoid, simple to 1-septate microconidia; and curved, simple to 1-septate macroconidia.

Lecania included in the family Ramalinaceae (Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005) is a widespread temperate genus of c. 48 known species (Kirk et al. 2001; Van den Boom & Ryan 2004b). It occurs on both bark and on rock, often in eutrophicated sites, and is widely distributed in the Northern Hemisphere, though still very poorly known and studied in the Southern Hemisphere. Northern Hemisphere saxicolous taxa are discussed by M. Mayrhofer (1988) and van den Boom (1992), and Sonoran Desert species by Van den Boom & Ryan (2004b). According to Ekman (1996a: 41) the current circumscription of Lecania includes taxa with the following characters: (1) lichenised, crustose thallus, with or without goniocysts; (2) lecanorine to biatorine apothecia with a proper exciple consisting of few to many hyphae; (3) fairly abundantly furcate but non-anastomosing excipular hyphae, the cell lumina of which are narrowly cylindrical (1–1.5 μm wide) in the interior of the proper exciple but gradually becoming thicker towards rim (up to 5 μm wide), giving each hypha a characteristic clavate appearance; (4) yellowish, brown or blue-green pigments in the apothecia that are often unevenly deposited in upper parts giving a spotted or piebald appearance to disc; (5) paraphyses easily separating in K; (6) simple or 3- rarely to 5-septate, ellipsoidal, fusiform or bacillar, rather thick-walled ascospores that are often slightly curved, but without a perispore or ornamentation; (7) a tholus with a low and blunt, ±conical ocular chamber, and a fairly high, conical axial body that may be often but not always surrounded by a heavily amyloid zone that is darker than the remainder of the d-layer; (8) strongly curved to sigmoid, 0–1-septate microconidia and ±curved 0–1-septate macroconidia.

Four species are currently recorded from New Zealand, but the genus is very much in need of collection and study here.