Colorful lichens

Today while loitering among the rocks on a nearly vertical cliffy area with a southern exposure (the only place around not still covered with snow), I could see a variety of tiny lichen colonies and was struck by the variety and sometimes the intensity of their individual colors. I wish I understood the purpose of those colors if indeed there is one.

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River bank lichen

On the river bank the other day there were several bare rocks among all of the snow-covered ones about 50 feet up from the water, and some lichens seemed to love that environment, living with the snow in a very pretty way.

Pixi-Cups

Mixed in among the buttercups yesterday there were a few (just a few) Pixie-cup lichens in their fruiting stage.

Rhizoplaca & Candelariella?

Along an old road on which I walk very often there are remnants of a rock wall, probably built by men in the Civilian Conservation Corps in the early 1930’s when the road was a US highway through northwest Montana leading to Idaho and on to Washington state (US 10A). Over the years the rocks in the wall have become the homes of many species of lichens and add bright splashes of color, very welcome in winter.

One of the aspects of lichens that makes them largely ignored is that many are so small that their details can hardly be seen by the unaided eye even though a large number of them growing together may provide a pleasant color in their surroundings.

I was considering that today when I passed this section of the wall which contained a rock which is about a half foot tall and a foot wide, a large section of which is colored gold by a lichen colony.

Here is a closer look at that rock and you can more easily see a small circle of another species of lichen in the lower left.

An even closer look in which you can begin to see the individual lichens in the circle.

And a close-up of the colony in the circle (which I believe to be Rhizoplaca melanophthalma lichens).

And finally a close-up of some of the lichens in the gold colored section (which I believe are Candelariella rosulans).

While lichens are not true “species” in the conventional meaning of the word because each lichen is a composite of a fungus and an alga, they are categorized similarly and I’ve read that there are up to 25,000 “species” or “mutualisms” of them worldwide. It’s understandable but a little sad that most of them are either overlooked or ignored.

Family portraits

On a walk today I noticed some Pixie-cup lichens that were making their homes on a small stack of rocks. They were growing in small groups spread well apart and reminded me of families that might have gathered to have family portraits taken.

An oddity

Today I hiked for a short distance on part of USFS trail 223 starting at the old ferry landing at the fourteen mile bridge on Montana Hwy 135. The start of the trail roughly follows the course of a small unnamed creek and then ascends a hill overlooking the Clark Fork river. It is heavily forested and along the creek there is also quite dense brush. In a tangle of undergrowth and vines along that part of the trail I noticed a patch of bright white barely showing through the foliage just ten feet or so off the trail.

Upon investigating and removing a little dead plant matter I could see a large (1 foot across) patch of pure white which I could only guess to be a white crust lichen, something I’ve never seen before. It is on the end of an old log about two feet in diameter that had fallen and had been sawed off to clear the trail probably several decades ago.

I didn’t disturb it, but I did touch it and it was hard, like plastic. In a close up photo, what appears in the first two pictures as bright spots and really tiny drops of liquid, possibly from condensation during the night (we haven’t had rain in weeks). The even spacing of the drops also made me wonder if perhaps it had exuded from the lichen (if that’s what it is) itself. So far I haven’t been able to find any information on it.