Flora of New Zealand Series

Thallus crustose, thick, thin or evanescent, pale to dark grey, ochraceous, or brown or yellowish, continuous, cracked or areolate, plane, granular or warted, rarely isidiate, determinate or not, with or without a limiting, entire, dark, prothallus, corticolous, muscicolous, terricolous or saxicolous. Photobiont green, Trebouxia. Apothecia lecanorine or lecideine, innate or sessile, usually frequent, contiguous or not, disc brown or black, rarely pruinose, plane or convex at maturity, margins concolorous with thallus or disc, entire or crenulate, persistent or excluded at maturity. Hymenium colourless. Paraphyses expanded at apices, fuscocapitate forming a brown or red-brown, rarely a dark brown or blue-green epihymenium. Hypothecium colourless, rarely brownish to dark brown. Asci of Lecanora -type [Honegger Lichenologist 10: 47-67 (1978)]. Ascospores 1- or 3-septate at maturity with up to 15 different wall types recognised [Mayrhofer J. Hattori bot. Lab. 52: 313-321 (1982)], with unthickened walls to thick-walled placodiomorph, polarilocular or mischoblastiomorph types, torus well-developed or not, brown, ellipsoid, mostly 8 per ascus. Pycnidia rarely present. Conidia bacilliform.

Rinodina contains c. 250 species and is included in the family Physciaceae. Taxonomic relationships with other genera in this family and especially with Buellia are discussed by Sheard [ Lichenologist 3: 328-367 (1967); Hafellner, Mayrhofer and Poelt Herzogia 5: 39-79 (1979); Poelt and Mayrhofer Beih. Sydowia 8: 312-331 (1979); and Mayrhofer and Poelt Biblthca lich. 12: 1-186 (1979)]. Antarctic species are discussed by Lamb [ Rep. Br. Antarctic Surv. 61: 1-129 (1968)]. Lindsay [ Bull. Br. Antarctic Surv. 37: 81-879 (1973)] and Filson [ Muelleria 3: 117-121 (1975)]. The saxicolous species found in New Zealand are discussed by Mayrhofer [ Lichenologist 15: 267-282 (1983)]. The corticolous, muscicolous, terricolous and lignicolous species are rather poorly collected and understood in New Zealand. The endemic species R. macra Zahlbr., is referable to Hyperphyscia plinthiza. The high-alpine specimens of R. microspora Dodge, [ Nova Hedwigia 19: 487-488 (1971)] from Mt Haast in the central Southern Alps, were unavailable for study and their relationship is at present unclear. It is not discussed in the present account of 21 species.

Table of Rinodina spore types, after Mayrhofer (1982; fig. 1-2). a, Sicula -type; b, Milvina -type; c, Physcia -type; d, Pachysporaria -type; e, Mischoblastia -type; f, Dubyana -type; g, Bischoffii -type; h, Physconia -type; i, Bicincta -type; j, Dirinaria -type. © All rights reserved. [Image: 4X99]