hey im a couple years behind on the most cutting edge of lichen science, does anybody know if they’ve been able to create a genetically new lichen from known compatible lichen components in a lab yet or are the lads still getting away with it out there
This foliose lichen grows in small roundish-patches or narrow lobes. The upper surface varies in color from gray to brown when dry (darker in shaded areas), becoming bright green when moist. Lobe tips and occasionally surface area covered in coarse soredia. The lower surface is black with thick black rhizines. A distinctive feature of P. rubropulchra is the bright red-orange medullary layer at its core. This is due to the presence of skyrin. What is skyrin? I don’t know what do I look like a chemist? For our purposes, it makes red. P. rubropulchra grows on trees and rocks in eastern North America, eastern China and Russia, and Japan. Apparently it is a common snack for slugs, which doesn’t really surprise me because looking at that medulla makes me think of flamin-hot cheetos and now I’m hungry. Thanks, lichens.
Met a little girl last week with red hair and complimented her on it. She said she never saw people with her hair color, and I told her that there are lots of redheads in my family and proceeded to show her pictures. I don’t know if it made her feel seen, or made her feel a little less special (oops, sorry kid), but it got me thinking. I know you may look at P. albovariegata and think, psh, whatever, a boring gray lichen. But listen, this guy is in the Teloschistaceae family, and most of those lichens are bright orange/red. P. albovariegata is actually an original! A stand out! The gray sheep of the family. Someone’s ordinary can totally be someone else’s extraordinary! Keep that in mind when seeing the world everyday and you will never be bored.
I have never wanted chocolate chip cookies more in my entire life than I do after staring at P. venosa. This lichen has small overlapping or larger fan-shaped lobes. The upper surface is bright green when moist, and a dull gray when dry. Apparently there is also a darker blue-green morphotype with smaller, scale-like lobes, but I couldn’t find any pictures of it. This variation is dependent on the presence of a green algae photobiont or a blue-green cyanobacterial primary photobiont. It appears that the green algae associated morphotype is more common, though apparently they can grow in the same patch! The lower surface is pale with prominent veins and dark spots called cephalodia which contain a secondary, cyanobacterial photobiont. It produces large, circular apothecia along the leaf margins which are flat, smooth, and dark brown in color. P. venosa grows on moist, mossy soil at high elevations in the northern hemisphere. One of many Peltigera lichens, this one is the easiest to identify due to its characteristic leaf shape, venation on the lower surface, and distinctive apothecia. So go out there and find them! And maybe make some chocolate cookies and bring them by my place please? Thanks.
This crustose lichen has a thin, immersed basal thallus, and so generally appears as a smattering of round apothecia. The apothecia have a prominent margin, and a flat or concave disc. P. luteominia comes in two varieties: var. luteominia, which has orange apothecia, and var. bolanderi, which has bright red apothecia. Both can be found on rock and soil near the Pacific coast of North America.
K. wimmeriana is a crustose lichen with a gray or pink-gray thallus made up of rounded, bulbous protrusions. It produces cylindrical isidia, and brown-disked apothecia. It colonizes siliceous rock near water in sub-alpine areas of the northern hemisphere.
I would have never thought lichens could be vulgar, but here it is guys–the most vulgar lichen out there. O. vulgata is a script lichen, meaning that it has long, slit-like, lirellate apothecia. Also I hate the word slit. Anyhow, O. vulgata has a smooth, pale gray to tan, green-tinted thallus. Its apothecia are black, but variable in shape–from straight to curving to squiggly to star-like. So how to identify it in comparison with the vast array of other script lichens? By its longer conidia, of course! What’re conidia? Conidia are well, it’s complicated. They are tiny, asexual, spores that serve as the male gametes. So like, sperm! Kinda. Don’t worry too much about. All you gotta know is that O. vulgata’s conidia are really long. Now you know why it’s so vulgar! This lichen grows on smooth tree bark in humid, shaded areas throughout the world.
Thinking about it, it’s weird that so many things in the world ended up being cauliflower shaped–there’s cauliflower, cauliflower geodes, cauliflower mushrooms (genus Sparassis), cauliflower corals (genus Pocillopora), this lichen, etc. Nature loves a roundish, warty, white blob, I guess. Or humans do, and that’s why we bred cauliflower in the first place and started naming things after it. Well S. botryosum may appear cauliflower-like, but it is a lichen, meaning it is a symbiotic association between a fungi and in this case, a green algae. It grows on siliceous rock and soil in Arctic and Alpine habitats in North America and Europe.
Being an American living in Germany, I do not have access to many of the snack foods and candies I grew up with, and they often slip my mind. So imagine reading the word “starburst” and remembering that Starburst candy exists out there in the world somewhere and you do not have access to it. Trying so hard to focus on this lichen but all I can think about are tiny chewy fruit cubes … Anyway, P. endococcinodes is a foliose lichen with a gray-brown to gray-green upper surface and frequent, black-disked apothecia. It grows on rock and occasionally bark in Africa, Asia, Europe, and North America. It has a characteristic red medulla (inner layer made up of fungal hyphae) which I imagine is the same color as a red starburst, which is probably the best original Starburst flavor, though I am partial to orange myself. Wait, lichens, yes. And this is how P. endococcinodes got its species name (“endo-” meaning inner and “coccin” meaning scarlet and “-odes” meaning to have the nature of).
