Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. Stewart I., Port Pegasus, track from Disappointment Cove to Broad Bay, coastal forest on Olearia bark, 29.vii.2001, D.J. Galloway 0845 – BG. Isotype – CHR.

Description : Thallus squamulose, bluish, forming patches to 2 cm diam. Squamules deeply lacerate with secondary lobules, forming a lace-like crust, 45–75 μm thick, with a narrow (10–15 μm thick) upper cortex; lower cortex indistinct, patchy, one cell thick. Apothecia common, 0.5–1.5 mm diam., red-brown, adnate, often convex and complex, with a paler, paraplectenchymatous proper exciple, 30–50 μm wide. Hymenium 100–120 μm tall, I+ blue. Subhymenium brownish, of intricately interwoven hyphae, 120–150 μm thick. Asci with apical amyloid ring-structure. Ascospores colourless, broadly ellipsoidal, smooth-walled, 12–15 × 8–10 μm. Pycnidia not seen.

Chemistry : TLC−, all reactions negative.

St: Known only from the type locality. On bark of Olearia oporina, associating with Degeliella rosulata, D. versicolor, Menegazzia eperforata, Parmeliella subtilis and P. thysanota.

Endemic

Illustration : Jørgensen (2004a: 245, fig. 10).

Parmeliella rakiurae is characterised by: the corticolous habit; the small thallus with lace-like secondary lobules; the thick brownish subhymenium and the smooth-walled ascospores, 12–15 × 8–10 μm. It is included in Parmeliella sect. Austroparmeliella, and is most readily distinguished from them by its thick, brownish subhymenium, a character it shares with the type of the genus, P. triptophylla. The ascospores of P. rakiurae are smaller and smoother than those of P. lacerata (Madagascar and South Africa), and of those from southern South America (P. chilensis, P. rosettiformis and P. magellanica). From all of these also, it differs in the regular presence of secondary lobules (Jørgensen 2004a: 245).