Clauzadea
Type : Clauzadea monticola (Ach.) Hafellner & Bellem. [Lecidea monticola Ach.]
Description : Thallus crustose, often immersed, when superficial, grey or brown, granular to areolate, sometimes with a marginal, black prothallus. Medulla white. Photobiont green, Trebouxia. Ascomata apothecia, red-brown to black, with or without grey-white pruina, sessile or immersed (sometimes leaving pits in rock). Epithecium red-brown to brown. Hymenium colourless, I+ pale-blue in parts. Hypothecium colourless to red-brown or orange-brown. Hamathecium of paraphyses, branched and occasionally anastomosing, swollen and pigmented at apices or not. Asci 8-spored, elongate-clavate, Porpidia -type (Hafellner 1984: 320; Pietschmann 1990; Malcolm & Galloway 1997: 187). Ascospores ellipsoidal, simple, colourless, smooth, with a gelatinous perispore at first. Conidiomata pycnidia, immersed. Conidia bacillar, simple.
Clauzadea, included in the family Porpidiaceae (Hafellner 1984; Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005) is a genus of four species (Kirk et al. 2001; Meyer 2003), all described from the Northern Hemisphere, one of which occurs also in New Zealand. Species of Clauzadea grow on basicolous rocks (Purvis et al. 1992; Nimis 1993; Santesson 1993; Meyer 2003) and should be looked for on limestone and/or basic sandstone outcrops here, still a very much undercollected substratum for lichens. Clauzadea is characterised by the uniform brown pigmentation of the apothecia, simple, halonate ascospores; asci with an amyloid tube in the tholus and type II (Vobis 1980) conidiophores with apical and lateral conidiogenesis (Meyer 2003).
