Flora of New Zealand Series

Type : Flavoparmelia caperata (L.) Hale [=Lichen caperatus L.]

Description : Thallus foliose, loosely adnate to adnate, or rarely tightly adnate, dorsiventral, orbicular, to 3–20 cm wide. Lobes irregular, 1–8 mm wide; margins without cilia; apices rotund or subrotund, never incised. Upper surface yellow-green to green, rarely yellow (usnic acid and ±traces of atranorin), smooth, rugulose or rugose, without pseudocyphellae, with or without maculae, soralia, dactyls, pustules and isidia; upper cortex of palisade plectenchyma with a thin, pored epicortex. Cell walls containing isolichenan. Medulla white, or partly yellow or orange. Lower surface black, with a narrow, brown, naked marginal zone; rhizines sparse to moderately abundant, simple, tufted or rarely dichotomously branched, usually concolorous, often pale at lobe apices. Ascomata apothecia, laminal, sessile to subpedicellate, 1–10 mm wide; disc imperforate, shiny or matt, red-brown to cinnamon-brown or dark-brown. Ascospores ellipsoidal, 8 per ascus, 12–21 × 5–11 μm. Conidiomata pycnidia, laminal, subglobose to globose, immersed; ostiole black. Conidia bifusiform, rarely fusiform or bacilliform, 4–12 × 1 μm.

Flavoparmelia, in the family Parmeliaceae (Eriksson 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004), was proposed by Hale (1985) to accommodate 17 taxa, formerly in the genus Pseudoparmelia and containing usnic acid in the upper cortex. Species of Flavoparmelia have a black lower surface with simple rhizines, a distinct, naked marginal zone and have larger ascospores than other segregates of Pseudoparmelia s. lat. The bifusiform conidia and broadly rounded lobes distinguish Flavoparmelia from Relicinopsis (Elix et al. 1986c, Elix & Johnston 1988c, 1991; Elix 1994g; Kantvilas et al. 2002; Nash & Elix 2002c). Thirty-two species are known worldwide (Kirk et al. 2001) of which three occur in New Zealand, all found on rock, bark, dead wood and old fenceposts, farm gates and railings.