#caloplaca

Caloplaca eugyra

When people describe xeric ecosystems and deserts are baren and colorless, I am just like . . . what? Have you seen the guys who live there? Does C. eugyra look baren and colorless to you? This crustose lichen has a yellow-orange, pruinose (covered in a pale, chalky mineral layer), areolate (tile-like) to nearly placcodioid (tile-like in the center with marginal elongated lobes) thallus. The marginal lobes are tightly appressed (attached to the substrate) and crowded, distinguishing characteristics that help to separate it from C. galactophylla. C. eugyra produces flat, rounded apothecia which have a thalline margin and red-orange disks. It grows on calcareous rock in dry, continental North America.

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Caloplaca crenularia and Candelariella vitellina

Trancoso/Portugal (18/06/2021)

Caloplaca saxicola

Jewel Lichen, Rock Firedot Lichen

I have a secret for all of you. A pepperoni secret. And that is that I love lichens. Don’t tell anyone, ok? Shh...

Caloplaca pellodella (syn Caloplaca conglomerata) 

So a long time ago (not actually so long ago) people would look at lichens and be like "huh yeah, those pretty much look the same. They must be the same." And then some nerds were like "actually if you look at the really really closely and look at the chemicals they produce and stuff, you will notice they are actually different, but probably closely related." And then more nerds invented genetic analysis and were like "um actually, a lot of these lichens that don't look the same are actually the same, and a lot of these lichens that do look the same are not actually that closely related at all." And then because some other nerds invented computers and the internet, all the lichen nerds can argue about it from around the world, and we (also nerds) are stuck trying to clean up the messes made with naming these species before we had this all great new technology. Exhausting, really. So here I have a lichen that on one site is called Caloplaca pellodella synonymized with Callopisma conglomeratum, and on another is Caloplaca conglomerata synonymized with Caloplaca peludella, and look, I just gotta assume they are all talking about the same dude and he has just been named and renamed and typoed a thousand times over in the many years since someone first decided to classify him. And if any of y'all recall my good pal Jan Vondrák, he is currently working on disentangling the messy Teloschistaceae family and will probably end up reassigning/renaming it soon anyway. The Sisyphean reality of learning lichens.

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Caloplaca cinnabarina

There are more than 500 species of Caloplaca lichen described thus far in the world. To put that into perspective for you, there are approximately 174 species of ducks, geese and swans (Anatidae) worldwide. So when I say that the name C. cinnabarina has been grossly misused for Caloplaca ID, I think you can understand both the scope of the error, as well as how impossible it is to know and tell the difference between all the species of Caloplaca and give lichen IDers a break. I even deleted a picture I was gonna use for this post from a prominent lichenologist because the picture just didn't really match the description I was seeing. No shade because this shit is hard! C. cinnabarina has an areolate (tile-like) thallus made up of angular areoles (tile-like subsections) and short marginal lobes (only in larger, older specimens) growing in rounded patches on siliceous rock. It has a distinctly deep orange to red orange thallus, and immersed apothecia with darker orange discs.

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Caloplaca stillicidiorum

This arctic-alpine lichen forms a thin, scurfy or almost mucus-like crust on the surface of moribund moss, humus and plant debris, and sometimes even bone! It has lecanorine (dish-shaped with a thalline margin) apothecia which have a very narrow point of attachment to the thallus surface. The apothecial disc is most often yellow to yellow-orange in color, but can sometimes darken to olive-green-gray. It is visually very similar to Caloplaca cerina, but C. stillicidiorum has a stronger affinity for arctic-alpine habitats and growing on dead stuff than the former.

images: source