Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. South Island, Otago, Crown Range, 28 km ENE of Queenstown, on exposed rocks in tussock grassland, 1000 m, 3.i.1982, J.A. Elix 9803 – ANUC. Isotype – UPS.

Description : Thallus foliose, crisp, ±adnate, deeply lobate, thin to thick, 5–10 cm diam. Lobes 130–235 μm thick, radiating, ±extended, irregularly branching; lobules rounded or extended, 1–3 mm wide, imbricate, smaller ones distinctly canaliculate; margins ±undulate, entire, not swollen. Upper surface blackish to dark olivaceous, smooth, ±dull, epruinose, without isidia. Lower surface with scattered, rounded hapters. Apothecia common, densely developed, laminal and marginal, sessile, constricted at base, or broadly adnate, rounded, ±flattened, to 0.7 mm diam.; disc plane or subconvex at first, ±concave at maturity, very dark reddish when moist, slightly shining to matt, ±smooth, epruinose; thalline margin moderately thick, entire, smooth to finely rugose, rather prominent, persistent, concolorous with thallus. Hymenium 85–105 μm tall, red-brown to brown in upper parts, elsewhere colourless, I+ rapidly blue. Hypothecium 52–60 μm thick, pale-brown, I+ blue. Paraphyses stiff, simple or sparingly branched, 1.5–2.5(–4) μm diam., apically swollen, 4.5–6.5 μm diam., often distinctly septate, uppermost cells constricted at septa. Asci clavate, 64–70 × 15–19, 4-spored. Ascospores distichous and imbricate, or all spores at same level, fusiform or rarely thicker towards one end, apices obtuse or subacute, straight, 3–5-septate (usually 4-septate), no longitudinal septa, not constricted at septa, colourless, 26–32 × 4.5–6.5 μm.

S: Otago (Crown Ra.). On exposed rocks in alpine grassland. Records for New South Wales and South Australia (Filson 1996: 42) are erroneous and refer to C. novozelandicum!

Endemic

Illustration : Degelius (1989: 102, fig. 1).

Collema subundulatum is characterised by: the saxicolous habit; four ascospores in the ascus; the shape of the ascospores (in the related C. undulatum they are linear-oblong rather than fusiform); the thickness of the paraphyses (somewhat thicker in C. undulatum). It appears to replace C. undulatum in the Southern Hemisphere (Degelius 1989: 102).