Lecania turicensis var. turicensis
Family
Ramalinaceae
Flora category
Lichen – Native
Endemic taxon
No
Endemic genus
No
Endemic family
No
Structural class
Lichens - Crustose
Current conservation status
2018 | At Risk – Naturally Uncommon | Qualifiers: SO, Sp
Brief description
Characterised by apothecia with a whitish amphithecium that often becomes excluded, pruinose discs, and a white-grey thallus. A rather variable species.
Distribution
Recently recorded from New Zealand (2007).
South Island: Nelson (Pig Valley, Golden Bay), Canterbury, Southland.
Widely distributed in Europe, northern Africa, western Asia and North America.
Habitat
Found on calcareous and non-calcareous rocks, mortar or walls (brick), caliche or rarely shells, coastal and inland.
Detailed description
Thallus: crustose, granular to irregularly granular-areolate or areolate, effuse, sometimes almost disappearing or endolithic, up to 0.5 mm thick areoles: mostly sharply angular, sometimes dissolved into a powdery (leproselike) crust upper surface: glaucous-white, reddish white, whitish gray or pale brownish gray, not discolored when wet, dull, smooth to rugulose, epruinose upper cortex: sometimes present but not well-developed, composed of paraplectenchymatous cells, 20-50 µm thick, overlain by an epinecral layer up to c. 20 µm thick, without crystals medulla: not developed algal layer: irregular, 50-150 µm thick; algal cells: 8-15 µm in diam. Apothecia: numerous, scattered to crowded and deformed, rarely almost semiglobose, broadly sessile, up to 0.8 mm diam. disc: reddish brown to black, when moist becoming slightly paler and +dark-spotted, with a dark-pigmented edge, plane to moderately convex, pale gray-white pruinose margin: thalline, concolorous with the thallus, narrow (< 0.1mm wide), level with disc, often becoming excluded and disappearing completely amphithecium: with an differentiated algal layer and in part, a narrow, algal-free cortical zone, overlain by a thin epinecral layer up to 10 µm thick, at times overlain by a thick crystalline layer such that no differentiated cortical zone is visible parathecium: sometimes visible from above, narrow to wide, up to c. 70 µm wide toward the outer edge, ±prosoplectenchymatous, long-celled towards outer part and strongly encrusted with dark brown pigment epihymenium: medium brown to brown-black, spotted, occasionally partly extending deeper into hymenium along the conglutinate paraphyses; epipsamma: richly present hymenium: hyaline below, 5580 µm tall; paraphyses: unbranched, 2-2.5 µm wide below, apically strongly clavately swollen (up to 6 µm wide), coherent in groups due to epipsamma, in a gelatinous matrix; hypothecium: hyaline, unoriented hyphae, up to 70 µm thick in center asci: clavate, Bacidia-type, 35-50 x 10-12 µm, 8-spored ascospores: hyaline, 1-septate, narrowly to somewhat broadly ellipsoid, or oblong-fusiform, straight, not constricted at septum, (8-)10-13(-15) x (4-)4.5-5.5(-6) µm, thin-walled Pycnidia: rare, immersed, dark-brown black around the ostiole; conidiogenous cells: elongate, c. 10 x 2 µm conidia: filiform, mostly strong arcuate, 12-20 x 0.8 µm
Spot tests: all negative. Secondary metabolites: none detected.
Similar taxa
Similar to other species of Lecania but distinguished by its pruinose apothecia with margins that become excluded, and its glaucous thallus.
Distinguished from Lecania turicensis var. macrocarpa by its smaller spores.
Substrate
Saxicolous (calcareous rocks), mortar or brick walls, rarely shells
Attribution
Fact sheet prepared by Marley Ford (2 January 2022). Brief description and Distribution adapted from Van den Boom & Mayrhofer 2007, Habitat, Features and Similar taxa sections cadapted from Nash et al. 2004.
References and further reading
Nash T.H., Ryan B.D., Gries, C., & Bungartz F., (eds.). 2004: Lichen Flora of the Greater Sonoran Desert Region. Vol 2.
Van den Boom P.P.G., & Mayrhofer H. 2007: Notes on Lecania species from Australasia, with the description of a new variety and a new combination in Halecania. Australasian Lichenology 60: 26-33.