Flora of New Zealand Series

Thallus foliose, heteromerous, dorsiventral, lobate or ± squamulose or ± areolate or ± granular, orbicular to spreading, loosely or closely attached, often with a prominent black or blue-black, byssoid, marginal prothallus. Lobes variable, broad and rounded to laciniate, or microphylline and ± lobulate. Upper surface dark blue-green, plumbeous to fawnish, smooth or wrinkled-plicate, matt, glossy, or ± scabrid or pubescent, with or without isidia and soralia, maculae and pseudocyphellae absent. Medulla white. Photobiont blue-green, Nostoc. Lower surface tomentose or ± rhizinate. Rhizines felted, blue-black to whitish, often projecting beyond lobe margins as a byssoid prothallus. Apothecia sessile to subpedicellate, rounded, with a persistent thalline margin, concolorous with the thallus and exterior to a thin, pale, proper margin. Ascospores 8 per ascus, ± uniseriate, simple, colourless, oblong to ellipsoid, often apiculate at one or both ends, often with a thickened or warted epispore.

Pannaria, a cosmopolitan, primarily tropical genus of c. 80 species is included in the family Pannariaceae. Most taxa occur in the Southern Hemisphere but no satisfactory modern treatment of these is yet available. Jørgensen's account of the European species [ Opera Bot. 45: 1-123 (1978)] is the most reliable source of information on the family, but he does not define the precise limits of the genus. Ten species are recorded here from New Zealand, though at least two additional species are undescribed. Some species contain pannarin (Pd+ red), but as a general rule acetone-soluble compounds are few or absent and chemistry is not important in the taxonomy of the genus. In New Zealand, species of Pannaria range from s.l. to 2000 m and are best developed in "oceanic" habitats (moderate shade, warm, moist and with high humidity) especially in northern coastal sites on rock and on bark. Leptospermum is a favoured substrate for corticolous species.