Flora of New Zealand Series

≡Sticta weigelii var. sublimbata J.Steiner, Bull. Herb. Boissier sér. 2, 7: 642 (1907).

Description : Flora (1985: 562). See also Galloway (1997: 159–160).

N: South Auckland (Mangaotaki River, Pio Pio), Wellington (Tongariro National Park). S: Canterbury (Lewis Pass, Nina Valley, Dog Stream, Hanmer) [map in Galloway (1997: 161, fig. 41)]. Among moss on riverine shrubs in deep shade. Still rather poorly collected and understood in New Zealand. Also in southern South America, East and South Africa, Australia, and Panama (Swinscow & Krog 1988; Galloway 1994c, 1998e, 2001f; Büdel et al. 2000; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Palaeotropical

Illustrations : Galloway (1994c: 273, fig. 35); Galloway (1997: 160, fig. 40).

Sticta sublimbata is characterised by: the corticolous/muscicolous habit; a white medulla, a cyanobacterial photobiont, and rather thick, wrinkled-undulate, coriaceous lobes that are slightly glossy in parts and reminiscent of species of Peltigera. It has distinctive linear soralia with grey-brown, granular soredia derived from minute, granular-coralloid isidia, and a thick, dark-brown to black, shaggy tomentum on the lower surface, with scattered, white cyphellae deeply sunk in the tomentum. It is distinguished from S. limbata by its thicker, more coriaceous, rather variable lobes, which are never broadly monophyllous, and in having sorediate isidia instead of primary soralia.