Flora of New Zealand Series

Description : Flora (1985: 252).

N: Northland (Great Barrier I.), South Auckland (Waihaha), Wellington (Akitio). S: Westland (Kumara), Canterbury (Hamner Forest), Otago (Old Man Ra.), Southland (Aparima River near Hamilton Burn). St: (Port Pegasus). Among mosses and hepatics in shaded, humid habitats in lowland rainforest or bush remnants, and rarely in alpine sites, also among mosses and grass in small stones at the edge of roads and paths, s.l. to 400 m (map in Galloway 1999: 340, fig. 11). It is an epiphyte of the following phorophytes: Cyathea dealbata, Kunzea ericoides, Melicytus ramiflorus, Metrosideros umbellata, Quercus, and Salix. Known also from Europe, Africa, North, Central and South America and Tristan da Cunha (Galloway & Jørgensen 1995; Galloway & Quilhot 1999; Büdel et al. 2000; Jørgensen & Nash 2004).

Cosmopolitan

Leptogium laceroides is characterised by: the muscicolous/terricolous habit; crowded–congested lobes with entire to lacerate or isidiate margins; laminal, terete to lobulate isidia; the smooth to occasionally wrinkled–plicate upper surface; and the densely white-tomentose lower surface It is the isidiate counterpart of L. burgessii (Jørgensen & James 1983).