#lichens are so good
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.
Phaeophyscia rubropulchra
Orange-cored shadow lichen
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.
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Koerberiella wimmeriana
And this time
We’re going to get *BUMPY*
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.
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