Pseudocyphellaria billardierei
Folks often underestimate how big lichens can truly get, often becuase they mistake large lichens for plants. And I couldn't really blame you for thinking P. billardierei is yet another epiphytic plant making itself at home on trees and shrubs in the rainforests of Australia and New Zealand. BUT if you get up close and poke at it a little the lack of veination along the lobe surface, the lack of roots or rhizomes, the rigid lobe texture, and the apothecia reveal it to be lichen! This foliose lichen has long, linear, dichotomously branching lobes that grow in tangled bunches 5-30 cm across. These lobes are foveolate (with pits and depressions (like lungs)), with a gray to gray-green (when dry) to bright lettuce green (when moist) upper surface and a gray lower surface dotted with tiny, white pseudocyphellae. Along the lobe margins it produces apothecia with dark red-brown to black disks surrounded by roughed, tan to red-brown margins. Lichens are slow growing, so if you see a large, healthy P. billardierei in the wild, that is the sign of an undisturbed, old-growth forest, and you should feel very lucky to be in such a rare and vitally important ecosystem.
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