Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. Southland, Te Anau, Lake Thomson, xii.1962, P.W. James 402 – BM. Isotype – CHR 528303.

Description : Thallus squamulose, forming irregular caespitose clumps up to 5 cm diam., corticolous. Squamules greyish buff when dry, dark-blue when moist, delicately incised, often sinuous, thin (to 100 μm thick). Margins microphylline, giving thallus a lace-like appearance. Apothecia rather rare, red-brown to dark-brown, often deformed and producing several small, new apothecia within original structure, forming a multi-apothecium, 0.1–1(–1.5) mm diam., at first with only a thin proper margin, paler than disc, at maturity invested with a microphylline thalline margin concolorous with thallus. Epithecium red-brown, 10–12.5 μm thick. Hymenium colourless, to 100 μm tall. Ascospores broadly ellipsoidal to subglobose, apiculate, 12.5–15 × 10–12.5 μm, wall to 2.5 μm thick, apiculi to 2 μm long. Pycnidia not seen.

Chemistry : TLC−, all reactions negative.

N: Northland (Warawara, Waiwera), Auckland (Waitakere Ra., Piha Gorge), South Auckland (Moehau, Coromandel Peninsula, Pirongia, Moerangi, S of Turangi, Waipakihi River), Gisborne (Mt Hikurangi, Moanui Valley); Wellington (Gollans Valley). S: Nelson (near Rahu Saddle), Southland (Lake Thomson Fiordland). On bark of trees (Dacrycarpus dacrydiodes, Dacrydium cupressinum, Nothofagus menziesii), shrubs (Coprosma propinqua) and tree-fern brush (where it is often common), rarely also on shaded rock outcrops in lowland forest and subalpine shrubland, 50–970 m. Known also from Barrington Tops National Park in northern New South Wales (Jørgensen 2001b: 115; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Australasian

Illustrations : Jørgensen (1999a: 263, fig. 3A–B).

Pannaria delicata is a remarkable species that builds up thalline cushions by repeatedly producing new squamules on the older ones, which evidently die as they are overgrown. The squamules are very brittle and evidently function as propagules. It is distinguished from P. crenulata, which is Pd + yellow-orange (containing argopsin) and has more finely divided, more coralloid, gnarled, and bluer squamules.