#pectenia

[wild-e-eep]

A good stick! :3

I went to Glen Shira last week - it's a special place for lichens. Every tree was clad in a bewildering array of colours and textures.

[lichenaday]

Pectenia cyanoloma

I love a good color combo, and the brick-red apothecia against the blue-gray color of the thallus on P. cyanoloma is just magnificent. Give me a ball gown in those colors now! Actually, I don’t have any occasion to wear a ballgown, so I would settle for a striped shirt. This foliose lichen can be found growing on bark and rock in humid areas of western Europe. It grows in large rosettes up to 25 cm in diameter made up of undulating, ridged lobes. The upper surface is pale gray when dry and blue-gray when moist, and the lower surface is black. It produces red-brown to dark red to black apothecia. As you could probably guess by the epithet, P. cyanoloma is a cyanolichen, meaning it is a symbiotic association between a fungus and a cyanobacteria. Let this be your friendly reminder that lichens are NOT plants! Got it? Got it! Now get out there and spread the good word of the symbiotic lifestyle that is sweeping the globe!

images: source | source

info: source | source | source

[wild-e-eep]

More blue felt lichens :3

As well as a bushy blue prothallus, these lichens also bear the distinctive aroma of TCP - a british brand of antiseptic.

[wild-e-eep]

Blue felt lichen - Pectenia plumbea. Not looking particularly blue, or felty, but that's okay. ^_^