#calicium

Calicium pinicola

Yellow soot lichen

This crustose lichen has a yellow-green thallus which can be thin and semi-immersed in the substrate to thick and warty. It produces mazaedial apothecia, which means it produces spores in a powdery mass of fungal hyphae, so the center of the apothecia appears fuzzy or sooty when mature. This is typical of pin lichens, which have long-stalked, pin-like apothecia. But C. pinicola clearly has sessile apothecia, which is why up until 2016, it was placed in the Cyphelium genus of lichens with mazaedial-sessile apothecia. But molecular work revealed that in spite of this morphological variation, the Cyphelium genus was well nested within the Calicium genus of pin-lichens, with sessile apothecia occurring within multiple Calicium lineages, resulting in the synonimaization of Cyphelium with Calicium. Basically, size didn't matter--they are still a pin-lichen, even if just a very stubby one. C. pinicola grows on bark and wood in temperate and southern montane habitats.

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Pushing at the limits of what I can photograph well, and also what I can do 3d scans of. This is Calicium lenticulare, a lichen with tiny pin-head shaped fruiting bodies that grows on tree bark. The green crusty stuff is also part of the same lichen.

Calicium viride

Green stubble lichen

A vast field of stubble lichen - Calicium glaucellum (I think)

I put the Calicium lenticulare 3d scan into my flappy virtual reality flying program - it's fun stuff to swoop around. ^_^

Calicium salicinum

So we recently went on a lichen collecting trip and got some pin lichens! These little teeny-tiny guys are so hard to spot, but we found some growing on dead wood and logs used for building, and were able to gather some bits of wood that had peeled off with age. So I sat down to ID them and after nearly 2 hours, all I knew was that there were at least 2 genera of pin lichens on just one small piece of bark . . . *sigh* I love you lichens, but sometimes you exhaust me. C. salicinum can be identified by its immersed, inapparent thallus, brown pruina on the bottom of the stalked apothecial exciples, and its spores with spiral ornamentation. And I *think* it is one of the species we collected. Further testing needed. It can be found growing on deciduous trees and lignum in the montane belt to subtropics of Asia, Europe, and the Americas.

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Calicium abietinum

Fir pin, black stubble

So like, I need to clarify that the fruting bodies of pin lichens aren't *technically* mushrooms, but also what is the technical definition of a mushroom anyway? ("an enlarged complex fleshy fruiting body of a fungus (as most basidiomycetes) that arises from an underground mycelium and consists typically of a stem bearing a spore-bearing structure") So like, go ahead and call them mushrooms if you want, but just know that at some point some pedant might correct and I would have to give it them on a technicality. But in my heart, when I look at C. abientinum I am screaming "look at the bitty lil baby mushrooms!!!!" This pin lichen has an immersed thallus sunken into old and dead wood and bark, particularly that of hardwood and firs. It produces brown-black, thin-stalked apothecia up to a measly 1 mm in height, covered in a transparent gelatinous sheath and topped with a lens- or bell-shaped cap. It has a chlorococcoid green algal photobiont. C. abietinum can be found in dryer, temperate to boreal-montane habitats in North and South America, Europe, Asia, and Australia.

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Calicium adspersum

Spiral-spored gilded-head pin lichen

If you don't like stick-pin lichens, you are just wrong. C. adspersum is one such stick-pin lichen, meaning that it has apothecia that grow on tiny little stalks out of the thallus surface. These little guys are only 1 mm tall! The basal thallus is crustose, gray, and granular, and the apothecia are black with electric-yellow pruina! A bold combinations of color and texture that I support whole-heartedly. C. adspersum is a rare occupant of tree bark in dry, old-growth forests. And like many old-growth species, its population has decreased and is continually threatened by habitat destruction due to logging and urbanization. Because lichens aren't seen as economically valuable (hell most of the time they aren't even *seen*) they don't often get the protections they deserve, which is just so crappy. An organism (or a symbiotic association of organisms) shouldn't have to serve humans to be considered worthy of our respect, interest, and protection. So do what you can to spread a knowledge and a love for lichen, in spite of the fact that they lack capitalistic potential or whatever.

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