Bapalmuia Sérus.
Type : Bapalmuia palmularis (Müll.Arg.) Sérus. [=Patellaria palmularis Müll.Arg.]
Description : Thallus crustose, smooth to granular-effuse, verrucose or with radiate ridges, sometimes with soralia or isidioid outgrowths, pale-grey to greenish grey to dark greenish, often with a whitish to dark, cottony marginal prothallus. Photobiont green, ? Trebouxia. Ascomata apothecia, biatorine, sessile, distinctly constricted at base and often with a root-like whitish mycelium, Disc plane to strongly convex, orange-brown, pale- to dark-brown or black, pruinose or not. Margins thin, usually disappearing, rarely persistent, pale brownish pink to greyish. Exciple prosoplectenchymatous, of radiating rows of cells (textura oblita) and then externally sometimes with isodiametric cells, rarely with a labyrinthine structure (textura epidermoidea) and then externally with short, free, byssoid hyphae. Hypothecium colourless to yellow-brown, rarely dark red-brown to brown-black. Epithecium indistinct or yellow-brown, sometimes encrusted with crystals, giving rise to pruinose discs. Hymenium colourless, not inspersed with oil bodies. Hamathecium of paraphyses, unbranched, not thickened apically. Asci cylindrical with an apical tholus and a tubular structure staining I+ darker blue. Ascospores (4–)8 per ascus, acicular to narrowly cylindrical, transversely multiseptate to submuriform, colourless, not or only slightly constricted at septa, weakly halonate. Conidiomata pycnidia, rare, hemispherical to verrucose, often with a crateriform ostiole. Conidia simple, ellipsoidal to fusiform, rarely bifusiform. Chemistry uniform, the majority of taxa containing 4,5-dichlorolichexanthone (= coronatone) as major constituent, ±lichexanthone (trace).
Bapalmuia is a genus comprising 16 known species, was segregated from Bacidia by Sérusiaux (1993) and is placed in the family Pilocarpaceae (Ekman 1996a; Kalb et al. 2000: Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005). Species occur on living bark, overgrowing bryophytes or on the surface of living leaves and are found mainly in tropical regions (Gabon, Ivory Coast, Democratic Republic of Congo, Tanzania in Africa; Costa Rica in Central America; Venezuela, Guyana, Ecuador, Brazil in South America; the Philippines; Sumatra in Indonesia; Papua New Guinea; northern Queensland in Australia) with one species reaching into cool temperate forests in SE Australia and New Zealand. Bapalmuia differs from Bacidia s. str., (Hafellner 1984; Sérusiaux 1993; Ekman 1996a, 1996b) mainly by the ascus type with a darker I+ blue tubular structure in the tholus, the mostly convex apothecia, the narrower ascospores, and presence of coronatone rather than atranorin as the major secondary metabolite. Bapalmuia also has affinities with the Mycobilimbia sabuletorum agg. (Hafellner 1989a); however, species in the latter group have a different chemistry, typically short-ellipsoidal ascospores and asci with a tubular structure widening towards the ascus tip (Kalb et al. 2000: 284).
