Flora of New Zealand Series

Thallus crustose. Photobiont green, Protococcus, or parasitic and without symbiotic algae. Apothecia black, at first pyrenocarpous then lecideine, disc umbilicate, warted, rugose or gyrose, margins raised, cracked, involute. Exciple carbonised, at least on the outside. Paraphyses branched, anastomosing, indistinctly septate, apices always thickened, often confluent. Asci cylindrical-clavate, walls moderately thin, apices thickened. Ascospores very minute, simple, colourless, ellipsoid or bacillar, many per ascus.

Polysporina is proposed by Vězda [ Folia geobot. phytotax. 13: 399 (1978)] to accommodate taxa formerly included in the Sarcogyne simplex aggregate. A cosmopolitan genus of at least three species included in the family Acarosporaceae. One species is recorded from New Zealand on limestone rocks but it is poorly known and collected.