Flora of New Zealand Series

Type : Parmelinopsis horrescens (Taylor) Elix & Hale [Parmelia horrescens Taylor]

Description : Thallus foliose, loosely to tightly adnate. Lobes flat, linear to sublinear–elongate or sublinear, dichotomously to irregularly branched, 0.5–5 mm wide; margins ciliate, sometimes crenate; apices truncate; cilia sparse to dense, ±evenly distributed, simple or rarely branched, slender, not bulbate, black. Upper surface grey, sometimes darkening (atranorin and chloroatranorin), without pseudocyphellae, emaculate, rarely sparingly maculate, with or without soredia, pustules and isidia; upper cortex palisade plectenchymatous, with a perforate polysaccharide layer (pored epicortex). Cell walls containing isolichenan. Medulla white, or, rarely, partly pale-yellow. Lower surface ivory to pale-brown or black; rhizines sparse to dense, simple or sparsely furcate to squarrosely or dichotomously branched. Ascomata apothecia, laminal, sessile to subpedicellate; disc imperforate, sometimes radially split with age, pale-brown to dark-brown. Ascospores ellipsoidal, with thick walls, 8 per ascus, 9–20 × 6–14 μm. Conidiomata pycnidia, laminal, immersed. Conidia cylindrical or bacillar to bifusiform, 3–8 × 0.5–1 μm.

Parmelinopsis, included in the family Parmeliaceae (Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005), was segregated from Parmelina s. lat. (Elix & Hale 1987) and comprises c. 25 species worldwide, 17 of which occur in the Americas, Australia and South Africa. The remaining three are pantemperate species of wide distribution (Elix & Hale 1987; Krog & Swinscow 1987; Swinscow & Krog 1988; Elix & Johnston 1991; Elix 1993a, 1993b, 1994o; Kurokawa & Lai 2001; Kantvilas et al. 2002; Louwhoff & Elix 2002; Nash & Elix 2002f). Eight species are recorded from New Zealand.