Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. Canterbury, Moa Basin. Moa Creek, a tributary of the Wilberforce River. On mossy rocks, 17.ii.1979, I. Brown – CHR 381002. Isotype – BM.

Descriptions : Flora (1985: 559); Galloway (1997: 150–151).

N: Northland to Wellington. S: Nelson to Southland. St: A: M: (Kantvilas & Seppelt 1992) [map in Galloway (1997: 152, fig. 34)]. Also in Australia (Galloway 1998e, 2001f; McCarthy 2003c, 2006). Mainly alpine or subalpine among damp rocks in rock crevices in fellfield, in grassland, rarely epiphytic on bark of trees in the southern part of its range.

Australasian

Illustration : Galloway (1997: 150, fig. 33).

Sticta martinii is characterised by: the saxicolous/terricolous (rarely corticolous) habit; a white medulla; a green photobiont; ascending, lacerate-phyllidiate lobe margins, which may become occasionally white-pruinose or pubescent; fragile, somewhat papery lobes; scattered laminal, red-brown apothecia; pale velvety tomentum; and conspicuous, rather flat, white cyphellae on the lower surface. It is distinct from S. lacera, which has a characteristic ochre-brown stalk, a glabrous lower surface and minute, pinprick-like cyphellae. S. martinii is thinner and more papery in texture than S. squamata, and its phyllidia are really lobular extensions of the lobe margins and are not developed in the same way as the small, crowded, squamiform phyllidia of S. squamata.