#yellow lichen

[lichenaday]

Dufourea ligulata

Strap flame lichen

This foliose lichen grows on costal rocks, artificial substrates, bone, and occasionally driftwood in seaside Australasia and southern Africa. It forms rosettes and irregular patches made up of tightly attached, radiating or undulating and overlapping branches. The upper surface varies from yellow-orange to red-orange in color, and can be lobulate or scabrid in parts. It appears to produce orange, lecanorine apothecia, as far as I can tell from pictures. Sometimes lichen descriptions are really lacking online, even when there are abundant pictures. Gotta get on that, fellow lichenologists.

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[lichenaday]

Gallowayella galericulata (syn. Xanthomendoza galericulata)

Helmet sunburst lichen 

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[lichenaday]

Solitaria chrysophthalma

This crustose lichen has an areolate thallus of dispersed (often very dispersed) gray or yellowish-green areoles, often immersed in or hardly visible on the surface of hardwood trees. It produces bright yellow to orange soredia, and only occasionally produces orange-disked apothecia. It grows on isolated trees in mild-temperate regions of North America, Europe, and Asia.

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[lichenaday]

Chrysothrix candelaris

gold dust lichen, mustard powder lichen

Not all that glitters is gold--sometimes what glitters is lichen! A LOT of lichen. C. candelaris is a leprose lichen which grows on bark, wood, and rarely rock in sheltered microhabitats in cool-temperate, undisturbed regions. As you can see from these pictures, it can have a very extensive thallus, covering large areas in a thick, wooly layer, or it can grow in more dispersed, dusty patches across the substrate. It is always bright yellow in color, but can appear more orange or green tinged depending on its moisture level and how much sun exposure it gets. If you get up close and personal with it, you'll notice that C. candelaris is entirely composed of granules of fungal hyphae wrapped around bundles of chlorococcoid algae, primed for dispersal and ready to travel to a new substrate to colonize.

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[lichenaday]

Gyalolechia stantonii 

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[lichenaday]

Candelaria pacifica

Pacific candleflame lichen

Some lichens clearly fall into the categories of fruticose (shrub-like), foliose (foliage-like), squamulose (scale-like), or crustose (crust-like), but there are plenty of lichens that fall somewhere in between, or sometimes outside of those categories all together. When trying to describe the growth form of C. pacifica, I have found pretty much every term used at least once in a whole host of descriptions. But hey, sometimes labels are more limiting than elucidating, and that's cool. Just like, be however you want. This lichen has a variable thallus made up of short, bushy lobes that grow in overlapping or coalescing patches on the bark of deciduous trees and shrubs. It can also be found occasionally on roofing tiles and rock. It has a bright yellow upper surface, granular lobe margins, and a pale, cottony lower surface which lacks a cortex (the outermost layer of a lichen covering the photobiont beneath). It produces yellow apothecia which have convex discs surrounded by sorediate margins. C. pacifica was originally described from western North America (as the name would suggest) in 2011, and since then lichenologists in Europe have been reassessing their Cadelaria collections and have found that it is also widespread in Europe.

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[lichenaday]

Rinodina thiomela

Is leopard print back in style yet? No? Well nobody tell R. thiomela, OK? She's still a little stuck in the early-aughts. This crustose lichen grows on siliceous rocks in Australia and New Zealand. It has a thick, continuous to rimose-areolate (cracked or tile-like), sulfur-yellow thallus, and pale-margined, black-disked apothecia, producing large (by lichen standards), dark spores. And she's fabulous.

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[lichenaday]

Polycauliona polycarpa

Pin-cushion sunburst lichen

WARNING: Y'all are gonna see this lichen and be like "Oh I've seen that one! It grows everywhere around here!" Happens with every yellow lichen I post. BUT what you are seeing everywhere is close relative Xanthoria parietina, most likely you aren't seeing this guy. P. polycarpa has a more restricted range and habitat niche and can be found only on exposed hardwood trees and wood in humid, montane-boreal regions. It has a shorter and narrower, convex, more fruticose thallus than X. parietina, and grows in small, puffy, yellow-orange cushions. It produces lots of apothecia which have a concave to flat, yellow-orange discs. So as the common name suggests, it's just overall more pin-cushiony. Get up close and personal with your local yellow-orange lichens today! Maybe someday, you'll notice this guy in the midst of the tsunami of X. parietina.

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