Mushrooms 'n Moss 'n Mold

Puccinia albescens, a rust fungus, growing all over these townhall clock plants.

All photos from April.

Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis

Oldgrowth specklebelly lichen

Met a cool dude at a lichen conference a few years back who was brave enough to ride in shotgun for me across the great state of Idaho, and he introduced me to to the gorgeous P. rainierensis. This foliose lichen has a loose, ragged-looking thallus with lobes varying in length from 1.5 cm to 20 cm. The upper surface is a pale blue-gray and dimpled to wrinkly in texture. It produces marginal and occasionally laminal lobules and isidia. The lower surface is pale tan to cream, and dotted with pseudocyphellae (pores through the surface to the middle layer of the lichen thallus). P. rainierensis is native to the old growth, temperate rainforests of the Pacific Northwest of North America. It is rare, and recent reports suggest it is declining. But I am happy to see that lichenologists are working on monitoring it in the wild (and using iNaturalist as one of their tools to do so), and working towards public-private partnerships to protect this awesome dude well into the future. (shout out to my pal Stephen T. Sharrett for his hard work and important contributions leading the way toward a brighter future for this and other imperiled PNW lichens. I wanna be him when I grow up)

images: source | source

I wanted to share some of the really nice lichens I saw today in Mount Desert, Maine!

Biatora subduplex

This crustose lichen is common on plant debris, stumps, and tree bases in alpine and subarctic habitats, but has probably gone largely overlooked throughout much of its range since it is small, subtle, and easily confused with similar looking species. It has a pale, crustose thallus and produces orange- to red-brown, biatorine (with soft, non-carbonized, true margins) apothecia. The phylogeny of this species was elucidated in 2023 using genetics, but the morphological analysis showed an overlap between most morphological characteristics between the most difficult to differentiate taxa. Sometimes, that's just how the lichen crumbles, I guess. The authors suggest that greater sampling or inclusion of more morphological characters could help, but that for now, the best morphological character used to differentiate these species is the number of hyphae and paraphyses (sterile filaments in the apothecia structurally supporting the spore-producing structures) and densely packed into the apothecial margin and hymenium (area of the apothecia where spores are produced). As this requires careful dissection of the tiny apothecia and counting the number of microscopic filaments within a 50 µm area, you get why folks might avoid identifying these specimens down to the species level. That's just the joy of lichenology, I guess.

images: source | source | source | source

Cladonia ceratophylla

Unlike many members of the Cladonia genus with conspicuous podetia much larger than the basal thallus, C. ceratophylla has a prominent basal thallus made up of broad, branching lobes topped by thin, relatively small podetia. These lobes are recurved, with a smooth, green upper surface, and a pale, rhizinate lower surface. The upper half of podetia are covered in thin, overlapping, needle-shaped microlobules, a defining feature of this species. C. ceratophylla grows on mossy soil in humid-tropical regions of Central America and South America, including the Galapagos Islands.

images: source

Cladonia ceratophylla

Unlike many members of the Cladonia genus with conspicuous podetia much larger than the basal thallus, C. ceratophylla has a prominent basal thallus made up of broad, branching lobes topped by thin, relatively small podetia. These lobes are recurved, with a smooth, green upper surface, and a pale, rhizinate lower surface. The upper half of podetia are covered in thin, overlapping, needle-shaped microlobules, a defining feature of this species. C. ceratophylla grows on mossy soil in humid-tropical regions of Central America and South America, including the Galapagos Islands.

images: source

Identify pls

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.

images: source