#sticta

Sticta rhizinata

Fun fact about Stictas: they are the stinkiest lichens. They smell like rotten fish and wet dog, a really unpleasant combo. When I brought them out for lichen class this year, we ended up having to open all the windows in the course room so everyone could breathe.

A foliose epiphytic lichen found in humid forests on both islands, from sealevel to subalpine areas, in medium to low light. Olive-green to lettuce-green thallus lobes and bright yellow-orange apothecia.

Sticta tomentosa 

I know that people mostly care about like, mammals and stuff because they are fuzzy and cute, but S. tomentosa is fuzzy and cute, right? So I think she deserves at least as much attention and conservation focus as mammals! This foliose cyanolichen grows in large, rounded patches or rosettes made up broad lobes with incised, ciliate margins. The upper surface is smooth and blue-black to yellow-gray in color, with pale maculae and cyphellae scattered throughout. It has a thin layer of pale, velvety tomentum across the surface, more dense toward central parts of the thallus and more thin toward the margins. The lower surface is ridged and rough, and pale cream in color. It produces submarginal apothecia which have a velvety-pilose margin surrounding a yellow- to red-brown, convex disc. S. tomentosa grows on the bark of trees in mid- to high-elevation, neotropical or paleotropical rainforests.

images: source | source

AKA Cetraria lacera, Lobaria parvula, Sticta filix var. parvula, and Sticta parvula.

Found growing among moss on bark and sometimes on ground or among rocks, on North and South Island up to about 1000m, in moderate shade in forested areas, on soil on rocks in humid sites, and rarely on rocks in tussock grassland on Campbell Island. The more robust form that grows on treetrunks was formerly known as Sticta filix, but genetic evidence proved that it and the more delicate form growing around the base of the tree were the same organism.

Also known as Spotted Felt Lichens.

Little puzzling - one seems like Sticta fuliginosa or that morphodreme, at least, and the other seems close to S. limbata. Best to limit the ID to genus for now.

Sticta includes over 100 species of leafy lichens, mostly found in the tropics growing on bark, wood, or mossy rock. Most are brown or black on the upper side, and have a densely furry underside. Species with cyanobacterial symbionts are an important source of fixed nitrogen in rainforest ecosystems. Most species smell of seafood.

Two species - S. dufournii or the blue-green algal morphotype S. canariensis - are sensitive and accurate evidence that a forest has existed without being clear-cut since early medieval times.

I saw this name, 

Sticta arachnofuliginosa

and was like, oh hot damn. I gotta see what this lichen looks like. And so I google it, and go to the wikipedia page. 

Ok, some good info. She’s fairly new to science, she has a highly specific and isolated habitat. And no picture. Ok, ok, I will go to the paper. 

OOO! 10 new friends! Alight, alright, show me those pictures, I am a visual learner. 

FIGURE 1. Sticta arachnofuliginosa (holotype collection). A. Upper lobe surface. B. Upper lobe surface enlarged. C. Lower surface enlarged. D. Isidia enlarged. E. Microscopic section of upper cortex and tomentum. Scale in A = 5 mm, in B = 0.7 mm, in C = 10 mm, in D = 1 mm, in E = 50 μm.

Wait really? That’s it? A few holotype pictures? No glamour shots no pictures of it in the context of its habitat no shots of its overall growth form? *sigh* ok, I get it. In a paper they gotta show the distinguishing characteristics. They don’t have the printing space or what ever to just show off the new lichen. But it makes me sad because that is what *I* have the space for. And maybe I was hoping it would look more, IDK, spidery? That’s ok, we can do our best do enjoy S. arachnofuliginosa as is. She’s still beautiful, and one of many new species catalogued in understudied habitats in the last decade! Yay science!