Flora of New Zealand Series

≡Lecidea clavulifera Nyl., Flora 52: 294 (1869).

Description : Thallus whitish or greenish, scurfy leprose-granular to irregularly granular-areolate; areolae 0.1–0.2 mm diam. Goniocysts short filamentous or irregular, 14–35 × 7–15 μm, or to 25 μm diam., often fused and forming areolae. Photobiont Stichococcus. Apothecia convex-hemispherical, adnate, often with a white, byssoid rim (c. 50 μm wide) at base or becoming ±globose, 0.1–0.3 mm diam., or occasionally tuberculate and to 0.4 mm diam., grey-black with a bluish tinge, to pale blue-grey or grey-brown in shade forms. Hymenium pale-greenish to blue-green, K+ intensifying, HNO3 red. Hypothecium hyaline or pale-greenish or aeruginose. Pycnidia usually present but inconspicuous, hyphomycetous, with erect phialidic conidiogenous cells arising from hyphae in thallus surface or on old apothceia, when abundant giving the thallus a "frosted" aspect. Conidiogenous cells 7–15 × 2.2.5 μm, narrowing to 1 μm at apex. Conidia ovoid to pyriform, hyaline, simple, 2–5–3.5 × 1.5–1.8 μm, produced in chains (seen in SEM micrographs).

Chemistry : TLC−, all reactions negative.

N: Northland (Omahuta State Forest, 24 km WNW of Kaikohe). On bark of stump in forest. First collected in New Zealand by Leif Tibell (Tibell 14893 UPS). Known also from Great Britain, Belgium, Sweden, Norway, Finland, Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia and Tasmania (Coppins & Purvis 1987; Botnen & Tønsberg 1988; Santesson 1993; Diederich & Sérusiaux 2000; Scholz 2000; Hafellner & Türk 2001; Coppins 2002b; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Cosmopolitan

Illustrations : Coppins & Purvis (1987: 33, fig. 1B; 34. fig. 2); Lumbsch et al. (2001: 22).

Psilolechia clavulifera is most readily distinguished from other species of Psilolechia by its greenish apothecial pigment in both hymenium and hypothecium ["pigment A" of Coppins (1983)], and its greenish white, granular-leprose thallus (C–).