Flora of New Zealand Series

Type : Polysporina simplex (Davies) Vězda [=Lichen simplex Davies] [see Jørgensen & Santesson (1993: 885)].

Descriptions : Flora (1985: 411). See also Galloway & Coppins (1992a: 487).

Polysporina was proposed by Vězda (1978) to accommodate taxa formerly included in the Sarcogyne simplex aggregate. The genus comprises 10 species (Kantvilas 1998a; Kirk et al. 2001; Kantvilas & Seppelt 2006), mostly from cool temperate Northern Hemisphere (Europe and North America) habitats, where they are found on rock, soil and as lichenicolous parasites. One species is also known from Antarctica (Kantvilas & Seppelt 2006). Species of Polysporina are characterised by apothecia with a thick, fissured and often exfoliating proper margin, an umbonate to gyrose disc, typically with carbonised inclusions in the epithecium, and richly branched and anastomosing paraphyses with non-capitate apices (Kantvilas 1998a). It is included in the family Acarosporaceae together with Acarospora, Glypholecia, Lithoglypha, Sarcogyne and Thelocarpella (Hafellner 1995a; Eriksson et al. 2004; Pennycook & Galloway 2004; Eriksson 2005), and shares with these genera the following characters: a crustose thallus, a chlorococcoid photobiont; and polysporous asci containing more than 100 simple, colourless ascospores. It is distinguished from Sarcogyne (q.v.) by the umbonate to gyrose apothecia, and the richly branched and anastomosing paraphyses (Galloway & Coppins 1992a). One species is recorded from New Zealand.