Flora of New Zealand Series

≡Neofuscelia squamariatella Elix, Mycotaxon 71: 448 (1999).

Description : Thallus subcrustose, very tightly attached, 1–6 cm diam., saxicolous. Lobes contiguous to slightly imbricate, flat, irregular, short to sublinear, 0.3–0.8(–1.0) mm wide. Upper surface yellowish brown to reddish brown, paler at lobe apices, dull or subnitid at lobe apices, smooth, becoming fissured and areolate centrally, without isidia. Medulla white. Lower surface dull, not or only obscurely rhizinate, pale-tan to brown; lower cortex in part agglutinated directly to substratum. Apothecia common, ±immersed at first, becoming sessile or subimmersed with age, to 0.8 mm diam.; disc ±plane, dark-brown. Thalline exciple entire. Ascospores globose to ellipsoidal, 5–7 × 3.5–5.5 μm. Pycnidia common. Conidia bacillar, 5–6 × 1 μm.

Chemistry : Cortex K−, HNO3+ dark blue-green; medulla K+ yellow→red, C−, KC−, Pd+ orange-yellow; containing norstictic (major), connorstictic (minor) and hyposalazinic (minor) acids.

S: Canterbury (Hanmer, Lake McGregor near Tekapo), Otago (Dunstan Mountains). On rocks in open pasture. Also in South Australian and the Australian Capital Territory (Elix 1999b: 449; McCarthy 2003c, 2006).

Australasian

Illustration : Elix (1999b: 446, fig. 16 – as Neofuscelia squamariatella).

Xanthoparmelia squamariatella closely resembles X. squamariata (Nyl.) Essl. (known from South Africa and SE Australia) in its habit, having very narrow, sublinear to subirregular lobes, and in having norstictic acid and connorstictic acids in the medulla. While X. squamariata has a rather thicker thallus (0.5–1 mm) and broader lobes (0.3–0.5 mm diam.) and a jet-black lower surface, X. squamariatella has a pale-tan to brown lower surface, thinner thallus and narrower lobes. It also has hyposalazinic acid in the medulla (Elix 1999b).