Parmelina Hale
Type : Parmelina tiliacea (Hoffm.) Hale [=Lichen tiliaceus Hoffm.]
Description : Thallus foliose, adnate to tightly adnate, to 2–10 cm wide. Lobes flat, sublinear to subirregular and apically rounded, irregularly or rarely dichotomously branched, narrow, 0.5–5 mm wide; cilia mainly in lobe axils, sparse to moderately dense, marginal, simple, slender. Upper surface grey to grey-green (atranorin and chloroatranorin), without pseudocyphellae, with maculae, soredia, pustules and isidia often present; upper cortex palisade plectenchymatous, with a pored epicortex. Cell walls containing isolichenan but lacking lichenan. Medulla white or lower medulla yellow-orange. Lower surface very dark-brown to black; rhizines simple or, very rarely, squarrosely branched. Ascomata apothecia, laminal, sessile to subpedicellate, to 5 mm wide; disc imperforate, pale- to dark-brown; thalline exciple smooth Ascospores broadly ellipsoidal or subglobose, 8 per ascus, 8–14 × 5–9 μm. Conidiomata pycnidia, laminal, immersed, punctiform. Conidia cylindrical or bacillar to weakly fusiform, 3–8 × 1 μm.
Key
Parmelina, described by Hale (1974) as a segregate of Parmelia s. lat., was subsequently shown to be a heterogeneous assemblage of taxa some of which were transferred to other genera (Hale 1976b; Elix & Hale 1987; Elix 1993a). The genus as now defined (see above) has areas of species diversity in Eurasia and in Australasia (Elix & Johnston 1987b; Kantvilas & Elix 1992; Elix 1993b, 1994n; Kantvilas et al. 2002). It is included in the family Parmeliaceae (Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005) and comprises c. 10 species worldwide (Kirk et al. 2001; Nash & Elix 2002e). Species of Parmelina occur in cool temperate to temperate climates and are common on bark, twigs, dead wood and, more rarely, on rock. Four species are recognised in New Zealand. The earlier account of New Zealand species of Parmelina (Galloway 1985a) was based on a much wider circumscription of the genus and the five taxa defined therein are now referred to Parmelinopsis (3 species), Canoparmelia (1 species) and to Punctelia (1 species).
