Melanelia Essl.
Thallus foliose, lobate, dorsiventral, heteromerous, loosely to moderately firmly attached to substrate, corticolous. Lobes 0.4-11.0 mm broad, short and rounded to elongate, ± flat. Upper surface brown to brownish-black, with or without isidia, pseudocyphellae or soredia. Lower surface rhizinate. Rhizines mostly unbranched, rarely branched at tip. Apothecia rare in species producing asexual propagules, lecanorine, sessile to subpedicellate, disc smooth, imperforate, margins entire, flexuose at first, entire to variously notched and incised or crenulate with age, concolorous with thallus. Cortex lacking any reaction with HNO3.
Melanelia is a generic segregate of Parmelia sens. lat. , which with Neofuscelia accommodates the so-called brown Parmeliae [Esslinger J. Hattori bot. Lab. 42: 1-211 (1977); Mycotaxon 7: 45-54 (1978)]. It is characterised by the negative cortical test with nitric acid, frequent pseudocyphellae and soredia, a simple chemistry and a preference for bark substrates. It is a distinctly northern temperate-boreal-arctic genus with most species developed in the Northern Hemisphere. Of the 37 described species, 4 are known from New Zealand (Esslinger 1977, loc. cit. ).
