Cladonia chlorophaea sens. lat. in Southeastern Australia

Abstract

The distribution of species within the Cladonia chlorophaea group in southeastern Australia has been determined from a chemical examination of 148 specimens. The commonest species is Cladonia merochlorophaea Asah.; Cladonia grayii Merr. ex Sandst. does not appear to occur in the area studied. Cladonia homosekikaica Nuno is reported for the first time from Australia. The Cladonia chlorophaea group contains several morphologically similar species which are differentiated on the basis of their constituent lichen acids. Five species of this group occur in Australia viz. C. chlorophaea (Flirke ex Sommerf.) Spreng. (fumarprotocetraric acid); C. cryptochlorophaea Asah. (cryptochlorophaeic acid ? fumarprotocetraric acid with traces of paludosic acid); C. merochlorophaea Asah. (merochlorophaeic and 4-O-methyl- cryptochlorophaeic acids ? fumarprotocetraric acid with traces of homosekikaic and cryp- tochlorophaeic acids); C. conoidea Ahti (atranorin and fumarprotocetraric acid) and C. homosekikaica Nuno, with homosekikaic and fumarprotocetraric acid. A recent chemical examination of 148 specimens of C. chlorophaea sens. lat. collected in southeastern Australia (excluding Tasmania) gave the results shown in Table 1. The specimens were collected from 31 locations as shown in Fig. 1. The altitudes of the collection sites ranged from 2200 m (Mt. Kosciusko, N.S.W.) to 50 m (Gladesville, N.S.W.). No collections were made from north and west of the 500 mm isohyet; C. chlorophaea was not found in this dryer area (Rogers & Lange 1972). Acetone extracts of the specimens were examined by thin-layer chromatography (Culberson 1972) and the separated com- pounds were detected with sulphuric acid (Culberson 1972) and MBTH (Archer 1978). Grayanic acid, for use as a reference compound, was extracted from Gymnoderma mela- carpum (Wilson) Yoshimura (Chester & Elix 1980). The results in Table 1 show that the most frequently collected species was C. merochloro- phaea; 58% of the specimens contained fumarprotocetraric acid compared to 89% in North America (Bowler 1972); C. merochlorophaea var. novochlorophaea Sipman (Sipman 1973) was not found. C. chlorophaea sens. str. formed 30% of the specimens examined and a further 13% were C. cryptochlorophaea; 75% of these contained fumarprotocetraric acid compared to 82% in North America. The less common species were C. conoidea and C. homosekikaica; the latter species is reported from Japan (Nuno 1975). The apparent absence of C. grayi from southeastern Australia is in marked contrast to the distribution of the species within the C. chlorophaea group reported from the Northern Hemisphere (Nourish & Oliver 1976), particularly from North Carolina (Kristinsson 1971) and the southern Appalachians (Dey 1978) where it was the most common species found. Cladonia merochlorophaea, the most common species in southeastern Australia, occurs relatively infrequently in North America. Cladonia grayi is not reported from South Aus- tralia (Filson & Rogers 1979) or Tasmania (Wetmore 1963) but is reported from South America (Dey 1978) and New Zealand (Martin 1958). However, a recent chemical ex-