After we left the woods, we gazed across the brown grass. Pretty boring right? Wrong!
And dry, eh. It does however have a few patches of bare soil. Why is this interesting?
It is a great place to find Yellow Scale (Psora icterica), Cladonia lichens, other lichens, and mosses. All love the sun and soil.
Yellow Scale Lichen (Psora icterica) like many in the genus of Psora is partial to soil. In addition, open areas with plenty of sunshine is important to it. Much like me, I like the sunshine.
Next another soil-loving lichen. However, this one can tolerate both sun and shade environments. This is the Turban Lichen (Cladonia peziziformis). So in the sun, the globose brown apothecia will be a dark brown. In shady conditions, it will be a pale brown or tan.
These are the podetia. This particular species can be twisted and also has squamules (green petal-like thingies) climbing the stipe. These were about four to five millimeters tall. However, in the shade, more often the podetia can get up 10 millimeters high!
The squamules have a red and yellow reaction from the Fumarprotocetraric acid and psoromic acid.
Another soil lichen that is often overlooked, is a tiny black jelly lichen. And I was going to ignore it, but Jeanne suggested I collect it. Moreover, the reason for not wanting to collect was because I was not looking forward to trying to ID it. However, since it had some apothecia perhaps I had a chance.
A close up of the brown apothecia. The largest was only about one millimeter. A challenge for sure!
The section of a apothecium! The spores are located just under the top brown layer.
The spores averaged about 22 microns. And the little chain measured in this photo was some cyanobacteria or blue-green algae. So using this information, I keyed it to Lempholemma chalazanum. Sorry no common name. Hmmm, that leaves it wide open for someone coming up with a name. Perhaps Fairy Black Globs might be appropriate? I’m open to suggestion. LOL
This was just a sampling of what can be found hiding in plain sight. Additionally, there are plenty of mosses to observe hidden among the grasses. But I will let Jeanne, identify them. 😉
Tiny jelly lichen – the aspothecia are really cool
Thanks for encouraging me to collect it. 🙂
Amazing tiny worlds
You got that right!
Love the fairy glob name – I say go for it!! Or fairy jelly? Fungus article really neat.
👍🏼😊