Protoparmelia M.Choisy
Type : Lecanora badia (Hoffm.) Ach. [=Protoparmelia badia (Hoffm.) Hafellner]
Description : Thallus crustose, cracked or verrucose, corticate, often glossy, pale grey-brown to dark or chestnut-brown. Upper cortex of branched, short-celled, anticlinal hyphae, often terminated by brown-pigmented hoods and usually overlain by a distinct, colourless epicortex. Medulla I−. Photobiont green in a well-defined layer, trebouxioid. Ascomata apothecia, arising from within areolae or warts, immersed to sessile. Disc brown, generally darker than margin, epruinose. Thalline exciple, ±concolorous with thallus, 12–30 μm thick, with a medulla filled with photobiont cells and with a well-defined cortex as in thallus. Proper exciple colourless. Hymenium I+ blue. Hypothecium colourless. Hamathecium of simple or occasionally furcate, septate paraphyses, apices swollen, with a brown, gelatinous cap. Asci clavate, 8-spored, Lecanora -type (Malcolm & Galloway 1997: 186), with or without an ocular chamber, but always with a distinct, I−, apical cushion. Ascospores simple, colourless, ellipsoidal, fusiform-ellipsoidal, oblong-ellipsoidal to oblong, without a perispore. Conidiomata pycnidia, immersed. Conidia colourless, bacillar, short-acicular or curved and thread-like.
Protoparmelia, a cosmopolitan genus of c.10 species worldwide (Ryan et al. 2004c), is included in the family Parmeliaceae (Miyawaki 1991; Henssen 1995b; Aptroot et al. 1997; Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005). It is separated from Lecanora by the brown pigmentation, the generally smaller, narrower ascospores, straight conidia, and absence of atranorin in the upper cortex (Coppins 1992i). As presently circumscribed (Rambold 1989; Poelt & Grube 1992; Aptroot et al. 1997; Kantvilas et al. 2002) it is still heterogeneous. Taxa related to Protoparmelia atriseda (several of them being lichenicolous) are discussed by Poelt & Leuckert (1991), and Himalayan species are revised by Poelt & Grube (1992). Presently, one species is recognised in New Zealand (Malcolm & Galloway 1997).
