Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. South Island, Southland, Awarua Bog c. 2 km W of Tiwai Point, open soil under Leptospermum shrubs, c. 10 km S of Invercargill, 46º33's, 168º26'E, 5 m, 22.i.2001, S. Hammer 8154 – CHR. Isotype – FH.

Description : Primary thallus squamulose, soon disappearing, 1–2 mm long, 0.5–1.0 mm wide, irregularly crenate-lobate, greenish to greenish brown above, whitish below, attached to substratum by indistinct tufts of brownish hyphae. Podetia arising from upper side of basal squamules, 0.5–6.5 cm tall, 0.5–5.2 mm wide, straight to sinuate, tubular to irregularly flattened, indented, rarely laterally perforated, narrowly cup-forming or subulate or sparingly dichotomously branched near apices, brown to bronze, especially in lower parts, greenish brown to brown-black above, sometimes ashy whitish where hyphal layer is exposed or near soredia, mature apices irregularly swollen, vaginate, with smooth, undulating, irregularly pitted brown meristematic tissue or incipient apothecia along strongly deformed cup-like formations, occasionally the entire podetium swollen and deformed with thin cortical pruina mixed with farinose soredia, podetial surface generally corticate and esorediate at base, esquamulose or minutely squamulose, cortex present on upper two-thirds with longitudinal fissures or breaking into irregular shapes often with irregular swellings or verrucae, these giving rise to farinose soredia; soredia in pustules or irrregular soralia or massed in a thin layer along surface of upper two-thirds of podetia, whitish, brownish or very pale green, sometimes thickly corticate, esorediate portions of podetium growing out of sorediate areas, bases blackening. Apothecia infrequent along margins of cups, dark-brown. Asci and ascospores not seen. Pycnidia subglobose with irregular ostioles, pale-brown to black, usually along cup margins. Conidia falciform, 2–4 × 0.2–0.4 μm.

Chemistry : Cortex K− or + immediately dingy yellow-brown, Pd+ red; containing fumarprotocetraric acid.

N: South Auckland (Mt Moehau, Coromandel Peninsula). S: Nelson to Fiordland E and W of the Main Divide. Mainly subalpine on soil, rotting logs, in scrub and in tussock grasslands.

Austral

Illustrations : Hammer (2003b: 418, figs 13–16; 419, figs 17–20).

Cladonia fuscofunda is characterised by: frequent irregular flattening of podetia or occasionally with inflated podetia; and characteristic apices where brown meristematic tissue at the apex enlarges and deforms, covering the top of the podetium with a smooth surface that eventually becomes sorediate, pitted and irregularly split (Hammer 2003b). This species was earlier recorded as C. cornuta (L.) Hoffm. (Galloway 1985a: 110), now believed not to occur in New Zealand.