William Lauder Lindsay (1829–1880) was a person so ahead of his times in many directions that his significance as an advanced thinker in fields ranging from medicine and mineralogy to the conservation of biodiversity and lichenology is hardly recognized to the degree that it merits. This contribution provides a synopsis of the man and his life, his contributions to lichenology, an introduction to the works arising from his studies in New Zealand in 1861–62, and a synopsis of the modern interpretation of the six lichenicolous fungi he described as new to science from New Zealand