#lichenologist

[lichenaday]

Me: Why do I have so much neck and back and knee pain?

Also me:

Lichenology is neither for the faint of heart nor the weak of joint.

[lichen-spotted]

[lichenaday]

I got lichens growing on one side of my car because I park in the same direction every day. Any chance they'll damage the paint or can I leave them?

Yeah, they probably will. Or more correctly, they already have. But I am on team lichen in this debate so I would argue that you should leave them, paint job be damned. But that is totally just me.

[lichenaday]

Pulchrocladia ferdinandii

Lacy coral lichen, Biblically-accurate-angel lichen (I made this one up)

Almost forgot that this is the whole point. This fruticose lichen is endemic to southern Australia, where it grows on dry, sandy or acidic soils. It grows in large cushions (15 cm tall, 75 cm wide) of rigid, perforate pseudopodetia. It is whitish-cream to yellowish in color, and isn't known to produce apothecia, but produces globose pycnidia on the irregularly-branching, tips of the pseudopodetia. The official description of this lichen refers to it as "horny," which I am choosing to believe refers to the horn-like structure of the thallus, not to its desire to jump some bones. But if I am mistaken, go off, queen, you can get it. P. ferdinandii looks similar to sister-species P. retipora, but is overall larger, and prefers dryer habitats than the latter. And before you ask no, we don't know why it looks like this, so let's just appreciate that it does and that we are blessed to be able to see it.

images: source

info: source | source | source | source

[lichenaday]

Dibaeis absoluta

OK, so why does this lichen look like it is growing mushrooms, even though these are decidedly not mushrooms? My first answer is "just to fuck with you," but D. absoluta evolved long before humankind, nonetheless you specifically. So my second answer is because the mushroom shape just makes functional sense when you want to produce a fruiting body by maximizing the physical area that produces spores, and raising them above the substrate by a thin stalk so they can get caught in and distributed by wind. Ok, so they are the spore producing structure of fungi, shaped like that, how are they not mushrooms? Mushrooms are we typically think of them are the reproductive structures of basidiomycete fungi, the spores are typically released from the lower surface of the fruiting bodies like this:

And in an ascocarp, the reproductive structure of an ascomycete fungi like that of D. absoluta, the spores are released from the upper surface of the fruiting bodies. So like this:

OK this is waaayyy simplified. There are also a bunch of internal physiological differences but you, dear reader, can look those up yourself if you are curious about the nuances of fungal development. But very generally speaking, basidiospores come out the bottom, ascospores come out the top.

So not tiny mushrooms, but very very cute just as they are!

images: source

[lichenaday]

What's the difference between lichen and fungus, like mushrooms? Thank you.

Hoo boy, that's the question, huh?

So, fungi are a lot of things. "Fungi" is an entire kingdom of life, like "Plantae" (plants) or "Animalia" animals. Consider how much diversity there is within those 2 groups, and now shift your perception of what a fungi can look like to that level of complexity. In, say, animals, those complex differences are pretty obvious when looking at like, a clam vs a honeybee vs a crocodile vs a human. But in fungi, most of that complexity isn't super visible to the human eye because most fungi are small and cryptic, so it gets overlooked even though the diversity is there.

"Mushrooms" are the fruiting bodies of basidiomycete fungi: just one division of the entire fungal kingdom. A fruiting body is like, well, a fruit! It is a reproductive structure that releases spores, which are like the seeds of plants. These structures are attached to a "mycelium," a connected network of fungal hyphea (long filaments containing fungal cells). Think of the mycelium as like, the trunk of a tree, and the mushroom as an apple.

Not all fungi have a mycelium (the same way not all plants have a trunk)--many are unicellular organisms, and others have simpler body plans, and some (like lichens) have more complicated body plans.

Besides basidiomycete mushrooms, ascomycete fungi produce mostly "cup-shaped" fruiting bodies, often referred to as "mushrooms" even though they aren't technically mushrooms. Confused yet? Stick with me. What is a lichen? Lichenization (a fungus forming a symbiotic relationship with a photosynthesizing organism) is a lifestyle trait more than it is a distinct group. While most "lichens" are ascomycete fungi, there are some basidiomycete fungi that have lichenized as well. It is a way for a fungi (we call it the mycobiont) to basically "farm" algae and/or cyanobacteria (we call these the photobionts) to harvest energy from, and in return the mycobiont provides the photobiont with a safe environment.

Most lichens have "apothecia" as seen in the picture above: the cup-shaped fruiting bodies often found in the ascomycete fungi. BUT some (very few) lichens actually *have* mushrooms because they are a symbiosis between an algae and a mushroom-producing fungi (basidiomycete):

SO to conclude: --Fungi is a diverse kingdom of life --Mushrooms are a reproductive structure of a specific lineage of fungi --Lichens are a symbiotic organism made up of a fungus and a photosynthesizing organism (algae and/or cyanobacteria) --Most lichenized fungi are ascomycetes, but some are basidiomycetes --You can think of lichenization as a lifestyle as opposed to a specific group

Fungi are complicated and difficult and confusing, and wonderful and beautifully complex and endlessly fascinating!

[lichenaday]

what are your favorite lichens in each color of the rainbow? Are there any purple lichens?

I am happy you asked:

Red: Lasallia rubignosa

Orange: Teloschistes capensis

Yellow: Candelariella rosulans

Green: Sticta canariensis

Blue: Lobarina scorbiculata

Purple: Peltigera hymenina

[lichenaday]

My favorite part of teaching lichen ID class always comes when we are taking walks and I get to point at patches on rocks and trees and be like "hey, see that? Lichen." And then the students are like "what? no way. You mean those black spots on rocks/white spots on trees/etc. have always been lichen?" And I get to be like "yep," and watch their brain explode as they realize that everything around them has been covered in lichen the whole time.