Flora of New Zealand Series

Thelephora sericea Sw., Fl. Ind. occident. 3: 1928 (1809).

Thallus a basidiocarp, sessile, imbricate and united in rosettes or spreading ± irregularly and unevenly, to 25 cm diam., semicircular or reniform, soft membranous-spongy when wet, brittle when dry. Upper surface indistinctly zonate or azonate, dull green, dark green, greyish-green, malachite green to dark, bluish-green, fibrillose, fibrils appressed or ascendent, margins rounded, loosely radially fibrillose, dark cream to pale yellowish. Lower surface sparsely radially reticulate. Fruiting bodies developing at the tips of fibrils, at first scattered cupules 0.3-1 mm diam., coalescing to form scattered spots to 1 cm diam., or more frequently forming a ± continuous whitish or creamish hymenium containing basidia and basidiospores.

N: (Mangaotaki River, King Country). S: (Westland, near Denniston). On bark of Leptospermum or among mosses on Nothofagus. Very poorly known and collected.

Pantropical