Flora of New Zealand Series

≡Cornicularia ochroleuca β nigricans Ach., Lichenogr. universalis: 614 (1810).

Description : Flora (1985: 5).

Chemistry : Cortex and medulla K+ faint yellow, KC+ rose (fading fast), C+ rose (fading fast). Pd+ yellow; containing alectorialic acid and barbatolic acid (tr.).

N: Gisborne (Mt Hikurangi), Wellington (Kaimanawa Ra., Ruahine Ra., Tararua Ra.). S: Nelson (Cobb Valley, Mt Arthur, St Arnaud Ra., Mt Peel, Crimea Ra.), Canterbury (Craigieburn Ra.) southwards to the mountains of Fiordland, though mainly occurring on drier ranges E of the Main Divide, and throughout the Central Otago ranges. St: (Mt Anglem). C: (Mt Honey). On soil and rock and overgrowing mosses, subalpine to high-alpine, in exposed cushion vegetation and fellfield, 1000–2500 m. Often a dominant component in subalpine Sphagnum bogs where it forms extensive swards in lichenfield (see Johnson & Gerbeaux 2004), together with clumps of Thamnolia, Cetraria, Cladonia and Cladia, or developed in fellfield and on windswept soils on the exposed Central Otago tops where it associates with Solorina crocea, Brigantiaea fuscolutea, Tetramelas confusus etc. It is a circumpolar species in the Northern Hemisphere and also in the Southern Hemisphere where it is known from Tierra del Fuego, Tasmania, New South Wales, The Falkland Is, South Georgia, South Orkney Is, South Shetland Is and the Antarctic Peninsula (Øvstedal & Lewis Smith 2001). First collected from the Nelson mountains by J. C. Bidwill in 1848 (Galloway & Simpson 1978), its rediscovery on Mt Hikurangi by W. R. B. Oliver in the 1920s led to an investigation of the bipolar element in the New Zealand lichen mycobiota by G. Einar Du Rietz in 1926–27 (Du Rietz 1929, 1940).

Bipolar

Illustrations : Hawksworth (1972b: pl. 6A–B); Galloway & Simpson (1978: 508, fig. 1); Moberg & Holmåsen (1982: 100); Thomson (1984: 35); Dobson (1992: 44; 2000: 51, 52; 2005: 56); Krog et al. (1994: 111); Hansen (1995: 16); Goward (1999: 48, fig. 10A); Malcolm & Malcolm (2000: 90, 97); Øvstedal & Lewis Smith (2001: pl. 5; pl. 6; pl. 7); Brodo et al. (2001: 153, pl. 101).

Alectoria nigricans is characterised by: the terricolous habit; the erect to decumbent, rather straggling growth form; the terete to basally compressed branches which are dark-brown to black at the apices and pale pinkish to pale fawnish brown towards the base; pseudocyphellae (use ×10 lens) on mature branches, elongate, fusiform, white, to 0.8 mm long, plane, concave or subconvex; and the fleeting KC+ rose and C+ rose reaction. It frequently stains herbarium packets brown on storage.