So this was a barren biofilm hot spot that I kinda poked around at for a bit while enjoying KY glade cress in-situ two weekends ago. I still would like to one day get these fully ID’d at some point but all of these are very unique and strange, constantly overlooked species due to the obscurity of them.
Photo is biofilm soup...
Collema spp. (black jelly crust lichen group) is mixed with Nostoc spp. (not N. commune so I have no clue really what it is? Any algal biofilm experts out there wanna point me into the id directions )
Astrella tenella
I am pretty sure this may be a delicate starwort, like a real one( not one of the variants of some hemispheric liverwort) , they don’t usually grow in large colonies and most of the pictures of them that get reported are false unless they have the small form and the dried bodies. The thallus is often partially dried to the point that it looks near dead or like little dots attached to decayed segments on the ground. With that said, I talked to two of my friends that are pretty adept/mastered at identification and they said they can’t truly validate any delicate starworts without their reproductive organs present. So I still don’t know for sure but maybe someone will help on INAT eventually. The delicate starwort is rather rare, weather that be due to exposed shallow slow seeps with large karsty sheets to keep competition low being a rare thing or that they get over looked all the time due to being small as heck, it’s unclear. There are like 11 out of 15 posts on I nat that are legitimate and truly fit *research grade* id and the rest are misidentified or mis-verified according to my friends. So who knows, this could just be one of the other cryptid and understudied Astrella spp.
I took this photo in the Mcneely Lake Barren’s in Louiville, Ky. Got very lucky