#punctelia

[lichenaday]

Punctelia bolliana

Eastern speckled shield lichen

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[balthazarslostlibrary]

The same shield lichen, first after rain, and second two days after hot sunny weather. Lichens only photosynthesise when they have available water, and otherwise can go completely dry and dormant for months if needed.

Genus Punctelia, Speckled Shield Lichen, Aotearoa. Photo credit me.

[cedar-glade]

two dope ass macrolichens I got very excited about in a walnut tree last spring (55 dbh walnut 115 feet top to bottom which is the biggest black walnut i’ve ever climbed hidden in this valley in Mt. Airy forest in Cincinnati. )

I was excited because I don’t see these in Cincinnati though they are common in southern Ohio despite the fact. Really uncommon in city regions due to heat island issues low rainfall compared to past rain due to deforestation and climate change, and the classic air pollution problem. We got lucky, this walnut was in a valley and surrounded by forest, the tips were caked in one of these though the other was just pure luck to begin with. My first time seeing this species out of high quality habitat like Adams county Ohio or RRG region Kentucky.

Top is my favorite lichen, a somewhat variable species that appears on moss thats on dolomite, or moss thats on trees.

Shaggy-fringe Lichen, like even the apothecia are fringed!, when hydrated the thallus is an emerald green, its puffy sometimes and looks like a fringy tube lichen and sometimes the thallus looks thin like this picture, Anaptychia palmulata

Moondust Speckled Lichen with its dope apothecia large and in charge, Punctelia caseana

[indefenseofplants]

Rough speckled shield lichen (Punctelia rudecta) really enjoyed all that rain. #lichen #symbiosis #illinois #forest #foresthealth #ecology #trees #nature #outdoors #springrain #springiscoming #punctelia #fungi #algae #evolution

[dendroica]

Rough Speckled Shield Lichen, Punctelia rudecta (by me)

[lichenaday]

Punctelia graminicola

I love learning about a member of a familiar genus I have yet to meet! P. graminicola grows on rocks, moss, and occasionally bark or burned wood at low elevations in North America down in South America. This foliose lichen has a wide, adnate to loosely attached thallus of narrow, sublinear lobes that are pale blue-gray to green-gray on the upper surface, and pale tan on the lower surface. As with other members of the genus, it has point-like or pore-like pseudoceyphellae (openings in the outer layer of the thallus to the inner medullary layer). What's really cool is that scientists actually studied the developmental physiology of these structures within the genus, and found that P. graminicola forms these structures by arranging the medullary hyphae in circular groups and pushing from the inner layer out, shoving the algal layer up, eventually bursting through the cortex, leaving a gaping hole into the lichen!

Ok maybe not "gaping" per se--they are really small. Why does it go through all this effort to form these pores? The prevailing theory is gas exchange for the photobiont layer during photosynthesis, but that likely is only part of the story, as not all lichens have pseudoceyphellae but all perform photosynthesis.

images: source | source

info: source | source

[lichenaday]

Punctelia rudecta

Rough speckled shield lichen, speckleback lichen

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[lichenaday]

Punctelia subrudecta

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