#arthonia
Arthonia trilocularis
Can you believe this little little gray spot is a lichen? It’s true. A. trolocularis is a foliicolous lichen, meaning it grows on the surface of long-lasting leaves.
A little inside peak into Lichenaday HQ–when I search for images of a lichen, a lot of times I get pictures like this:
This is a picture from a botanical collection (The New York Botanical Garden in this one) of a lichen specimen. And a lot of times, these pictures are not that great. Like in this picture, it is hard to know what you are supposed to be looking at because there’s a big, dry, dead leaf with a bunch of splotches on it. And believe it or not, this is one of the better ones I’ve seen! Because A. trilocularis, the subject hear, is kinda just a splotch on a leaf, and this was the only picture of it I could find that actually like, shows *the leaf.* For a lot of other lichens, once they are dried and aged, they don’t look like the living specimen at all, and the pictures are often from such a distance that you can’t tell what the F you are looking at. But those are the only pictures I find for lots of species. I avoid posting them because they are usually not great to look at and not super helpful for field ID purposes, but I thought I’d share this one so you get an idea of the substrate for this little splotchy fella.
