Flora of New Zealand Series

≡Ascidium elatius Stirt., Bot. J. Linn. Soc. 14: 466 (1875).

=Ascidium melanosporum C.Knight, Trans. N. Z. Inst. 7: 363 (1875).

=Anthracothecium monosporum Müll. Arg., Bull. Herb. Boissier 3: 327 (1895).

≡Polyblastiopsis monosporum (Müll.Arg.) Upreti & Ajay Singh, Brunonia 10: 226 (1987).

Lectotype: New Zealand. Near Wellington, received 11.ii.1882, J. Buchanan – BM [fide Galloway (1985a: 205)]. Isolectotype – WELT [annotated "J.Buchanan 129, Tinakori Hills, August 1873"].

Ascidium melanosporum. Lectotype: New Zealand. Sine loco [probably Wellington], Charles Knight – BM [fide Galloway (1985a: 205)].

Description : Flora (1985: 204–205).

N: Auckland (Waitakere Ra.) to Wellington. S: Nelson, Otago (Mt Cargill). On bark of forest trees, Dacrydium cupressinum, Dysoxylum spectabile, Myrsine australis, Nothofagus fusca, N. solandri, Rhopalostylis sapida and rarely on coastal rocks (Waitakere Ra.; Bartlett 1988: 12). Still very much under-collected in New Zealand. Probably more widely distributed. Known also in Australia (McCarthy & Kantvilas 1993a; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Australasian

Illustrations : Knight (1875: pl. XXIII, fig. 17 – as Ascidium melanosporum); Upreti & Singh (1987b: 227, figs 1, 2; 228, figs 5–8); Malcolm & Galloway (1997: 133, 166).

Laurera elatior is characterised by: the corticolous habit; the olive-greenish to fawnish, nodular–papillate thallus; perithecia in prominent, hemispherical, monocarpic thalline verrucae; and large, dark red-brown, densely muriform ascospores, 230–330 × 60–90 μm, that are often visible as tiny black rods on the outside of the thallus near the perithecia (×10 lens). The ascospores darken in the ascus, unlike many colourless ascospores of Trypetheliaceae and lichens that only become brown after their release from perithecia (Harris 1986). The Tasmanian terricolous species Laurera robusta McCarthy & Kantvilas, o has large, dark-brown, muriform ascospores that darken in the ascus before release (McCarthy & Kantvilas 1993a).