Xanthoparmelia convoluta
The image of a tumbleweed blowing across a barren desert landscape is so common I bet you can picture it in your head right now. But did you know that in some ecosystems, you could replace that tumbleweed with a lichen? That's right! There are a number of "vagrant lichens" and "erratic lichens" as they are known that grow detached from substrate, and are pushed around their habitat by strong winds. X. convoluta, one such vagrant lichen, is native to arid regions of southern Australia. It has a foliose thallus that grows in convoluted (see what I did there?), rolled-up bunches when dry, but when wet, spread out, revealing elongate, flat, dichotomous branches with a yellow-green upper surface and a dark-brown loser surface. It only rarely produces apothecia, and instead likely propagates clonally via fracturing as it gets tossed about.
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