Coccocarpia palmicola
Common name
Salted shell lichen
Synonyms
Lecidea palmicola, Coccocarpia cronia, Parmelia cronia, Parmelia cronia
Family
Coccocarpiaceae
Flora category
Lichen – Native
Endemic taxon
No
Endemic genus
No
Endemic family
No
Structural class
Lichens - Foliose
Current conservation status
2018 | Not Threatened | Qualifiers: SO
Brief description
A very variable species. The texture and colour of the upper surface appear to be modified by microhabitat and/or microclimate. Exposed muscicolous or terricolous collections are dark greyish or black with a thick, leathery, rather scabrid thallus while specimens from more protected subalpine or alpine sites are conspicuously blue-grey (especially at lobe margins), with a rather thin, delicate, friable thallus. Isidia may be sparse or dense, forming a ±areolate or dense crust, and may be simple or coralloid, even on the same thallus. The colour of rhizines varies continuously from dark bluish or black to pale, sometimes in one specimen. The colour of the apothecial disc may vary from pale-brown to dark reddish brown or blackish within the same apothecium.
Distribution
North Island: Three Kings Islands to Wellington (York Bay). South Island: Nelson (Kaihoka Lakes, St Arnaud Ranges) to Southland. Stewart Island: Mt Anglem to Port Pegasus. Auckland Islands.
Known also from Africa, Asia, the Pacific, Brazil, and Australia.
Habitat
Widely distributed from s.l. to 2010 m, colonising a variety of substrata, coastal and inland in high-humidity habitats. An epiphyte of trees and shrubs in coastal broadleaved forests as well as from inland Fuscospora forests; also on clay banks, bryophyte cushions in subalpine grasslands and on mossy rocks in alpine grassland and fellfield.
Detailed description
Thallus ± orbicular to 8 cm diam. Lobes 0.2-0.6(-1.0) cm wide, adjacent to imbricate, broadly cuneate to flabellate, apices rotund. Upper surface rather variable in texture, smooth, matt or slightly shining to ± wrinkled, scabrid, isidiate, often also with transverse, concentric ridges. Isidia concolorous with thallus or darker, terete, nodular when young, becoming coralloid, sparse or forming a dense, ± areolate crust centrally. Rhizines dense, colour variable, pale to dark bluish-black (then often white-tipped), sometimes projecting beyond lobe margins. Apothecia adnate, to 0.4 cm diam., orbicular at first, becoming irregular with age, disc pale brown-red to black. Ascospores 9-11 × 3-5 µm.
Similar taxa
Coccocarpia palmicola is distinguished from C. pellita by the morphology of the isidia.
Substrate
Corticolous, saxicolous
Attribution
Fact sheet prepared by Marley Ford (24 December 2021). Brief description, Distribution, Habitat, Features and Similar taxa sections copied from Galloway (1985) & Galloway (2007).
References and further reading
Galloway D.J. 1985: Flora of New Zealand: Lichens. Wellington: PD Hasselberg, Government Printer. 662 pp.
Galloway D.J. 2007: Flora of New Zealand: Lichens, including lichen-forming and lichenicolous fungi. 2nd edition. Lincoln, Manaaki Whenua Press. 2261 pp.