Flora of New Zealand Series

≡Lecidea bullata Meyen & Flot., Nova Acta Acad. Leopold. Carolin. 17, Suppl. 2: 227 (1843).

Descriptions : Flora (1985: 582–583). See also Timdal (1991: 48–49).

Chemistry : Unidentified triterpenoids.

N: Gisborne (Mt Hikurangi). S: Nelson (Mt Arthur), Canterbury (Cass) to Fiordland. St: Alpine or subalpine, on both sides of the Main Divide; especially common on damp, schist faces on the Central Otago Mountains. On soil or among bryophytes in drainage cracks in rock, often associated with Coccocarpia palmicola, Massalongia carnosa, Pannaria hookeri, Parmelia signifera and Siphula decumbens. Known also from SE Australia, Tasmania, South Africa, Argentina, Chile (including Juan Fernandez), Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and the USA (Colorado) (Timdal 1991: 50; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Austral

Illustrations : Willis (1956: 126, pl. VII; 127 – as Bibbya muelleri); Wardle (1979: 134, fig. 51A); Timdal (1991: 14, fig. 2B; 49, fig. 21); Malcolm & Malcolm (2000: 40, 116); Lumbsch et al. (2001: 15); McCarthy & Malcolm (2004: 60).

Toninia bullata is characterised by: the terricolous habit (acid soils); bullate to columnar, brown to reddish brown, dull to glossy, simple to branched squamules, often swollen at apices and with punctiform pseudocyphellae developing into pores; marginate, epruinose, black apothecia developing at tips of squamules; a blue-green (K−, N+violet) epithecium; a colourless to pale-brown hypothecium; and acicular, 3–7-septate ascospores, 37–55.5 × 3–4 μm.