I am obsessed with this teeny-tiny little guy. If I don't find him in the wild before the end of my life . . . well let's not go there. But anyway, obsessed! This crustose lichen grows on rocky soil, dry animal scat (like rabbit pellets), bunchgrass-bases, and plant material in arid, high-mountain deserts of western North America. It has a whitish-gray, granular or warty thallus containing a green algal photobiont. It produces cylindrical apothecia with yellow-rimmed discs less than 1 mm wide. I say discs, but these apothecial discs look more like fluffy little mold colonies, as they are covered in a network of yellow, green, or blackish fungal hyphea and spores known as a mazaedium. Visually similar to a mold, but morphologically and functionally different. The spores produced from this mazaedium are super unique in that they themselves are covered in a "coat" of fungal hyphae--a unique trait only found in this one lichen! It has been theorized that this coat helps the spores to survive longer following dispersal in the harsh, dry environments it prefers. T. sancti-jacobi is only found in scattered, undisturbed habitats, and due to its specificity and rarity, has been granted "endangered species" status according to the IUCN Red List.
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