Flora of New Zealand Series

Holotype: New Zealand. Three Kings Is, Great I., Castaway Valley Camp, on Kunzea ericoides, on Sticta squamata, xi.1970, D.J. Galloway s.n., CHR 375913.

Description : Lichenicolous, parasitic on Sticta squamata, producing brown ascomata on unchanged host thalli. Apothecia, immersed at first then conspicuously superficial, sessile, to 560–670 μm diam., brown to dark red-brown, mainly arising in groups of 3–4, or rarely solitary. Ectal exciple rugose to fissured, splitting into irregular hemispherical or elongated aggregations of cells (42–)50–55(–85) μm diam., brown; textura globosa cells brown with unequally thickened walls, 5.5–9 μm diam. Hymenium 54–72.5 μm tall, hyaline to pale-yellowish or yellow-brownish. Epithecium reddish brown to dark-brown, 18–20 μm thick. Paraphyses 2.5–3.5 μm thick, expanded to 4.5 μm at apices and there agglutinated and darkened. Hypothecium pale yellowish to yellow-brown, 90–110 μm thick. Asci narrowly cylindrical, evenly thin at apex, 52–54 × 5–5.5 μm, I−. Ascospores hyaline, narrow-ellipsoidal, simple, smooth or with slightly verrucose outer wall, 8–9 × 2.5–3 μm.

N: Northland (Three Kings Is). Known only from the type locality.

Endemic

Host : Sticta squamata.

Illustration : Kondratyuk & Galloway (1995b: 260, fig. 3).

* Unguiculariopsis triregia is most closely related to * U. ahtii, which parasitises Pseudocyphellaria valdiviana in southern Chile (Kondratyuk et al. 1994), but differs in having apothecia arising in groups of 3–4 rather than singly; in having a a more differentiated and darker epithecium, and thickened, agglutinated paraphysis tips. The ascospores are also shorter and wider than those of * U. ahtii (9–12.5 × 1.5–2 μm).