Greetings in the new year. The blog has been a little quite but it’s time to get back at it. With the heavy snow cover over much of the state it’s not a great time to be searching for lichens, much better to be working through sightings from the past year. However this lichen is actually one that will stick out above the snow. Villophora microphyllina has a few different names out there depending on the reference and was once part of the formerly mighty Caloplaca genus. It can be looked for over much of the state, although from the specimen map on the Consortium of North American Lichen Herbaria (CNALH) site I would guess the eastern plains are a more likely place to find it.
As my title suggests I have exclusively found this species on fenceposts in mostly open country. On a recent drive in Kansas I actually saw a bright orange top to a fence and sure enough it was also this species. I assume this is both due to the lichen’s habitat preference and the fact that a bright orange fence post is easy to see. A little more effort and surely the lichen can also be found on more natural substrates.
This is an extremely tiny lichen. A good macro photo or hand lens is needed to really see the details in the field. However, in the field the generally grainy look should be obvious. This is due to the numerous soredia. Beware some lookalikes out there where the thallus is entirely soredia and looks like someone spilled a powder. In this species there should be some true margins visible and the thallus more or less continuous. Easier to spot are the bright orange/red apothecia, clearly contrasting with the more dull orange thallus (Note the lichen in the top photo has very few apothecia a sterile specimen would be difficult to ID).
Next time you are out on a country road don’t forget to stop and inspect the fenceposts.
Lichens come in some fabulous colors. They decorate our rocks and trees and in some places they dominate their substrate so heavily that we don’t even see the rock underneath. Only seeing the lichens. The wonderful flatirons of Boulder are a great example. You can see the Pleopsidium flavum from miles away1! Depending on who you ask, lichens cover between 5-8% of the Earth’s land surface2.
The brilliant reds and oranges of the family Teloschistaceae are particularly stunning. The red color comes from a series of different compounds called anthraquinones, in part. The color is so distinctive to the family that is it nearly diagnostic (don’t worry, lichen lovers, exceptions abound).
One fun thing about this group of chemicals is that they turn a deep purple when exposed to potassium hydroxide, called a K test if you want to look cool around other lichen enthusiasts.
Another important lichen color to learn is a rather unique yellow/green (left). This color comes from usnic acid. It is a very common lichen substance. The term lichen substance is a very unimaginative term used for the unique chemical compounds that lichens produce. Lichen substances are very important in taxonomy and often identification.
Lichens in the family Physciaceae are a wonderful blue grey color (below) that is a great test of your photography skills. I, at least, never get the color to show up true.
Once you are done ogling over some lovely lichen thalli, ponder a simple question. Why are lichens colorful? Lichens live an odd life. They grow extremely slowly and never move, just sitting there soaking in the sun, while their photobiont friends make them sugars.
The other photosynthetic organisms lichen hunters encounter frequently are a good start for what color a lichen should be. I’m talking about plants (hardcore lichen finders only acknowledge plants as a potential substrate for lichens to grow on; skip this paragraph if it’s upsetting). Plants are green because they want their photosynthetic cells to get as much light as possible and the chlorophyll they use is a bright green. In other words, no other colors are in the way of absorbing precious light. Our good friend Peltigera aphthosa (right) is green (when wet) for a similar reason3. But it is by far the exception; most other lichens need to be cut into to reveal the photobiont. This means the lichen is sacrificing optimal light penetration.
So why are lichens so beautiful? The resources I own spend very little time on the subject. In Brodo’s Lichens of North America we only get two pages. One possibility is that bright colors are protective against ultraviolet radiation. This appears to be very true with our Rusavskia elegans (I promise a lichens in space post soon and, yes, its related). White colors can scatter light, which is protective for species that are in exposed habitat. The lichens can’t afford for their photobiont friends to bake or they won’t live long.
I hope to come back to this question in a new series of posts. Get ready to break out your old biology textbooks, and, far more frighteningly, maybe even a little organic chemistry.
1 Okay, some squinting required, but if you see any lemon yellow up there it’s very likely this species.
2 Asplund, J., & Wardle, D. A. (2016). How lichens impact on terrestrial community and Ecosystem Properties. Biological Reviews, 92(3), 1720–1738. https://doi.org/10.1111/brv.12305
3 While I couldn’t specifically find an answer, the photobiont in Peltigera aphthosa is a green algae in the genus Coccomyxa. Like plants it uses chlorophyll a, but may have different concentrations of other chlorophylls. There are three CO Peltigera that share this character, Peltigera venosa, leucophlebia, and aphthosa. The remaining Peltigera have Nostoc, a blue-green cyanobacteria, as a photobiont. They also are bright green only when wet and brown/green when dry. I’d love to try and figure out why this rather major difference does not put the green algae species in their own genus. Check out this post for some more information about Petigera leucophlebia.
The Powdered Sunshine Lichen or Vulpicida pinastri is certainly one of the most striking of Colorado lichens. For those of us who like to identify lichen to species it also happens to be highly distinctive!
This species is quite common once you know where to look for it. It likes cool wetter areas in the higher areas of the foothills up to timberline. It is a corticolous lichen, fancy scientist speak for growing on trees of bark. The species has a particular fondness for stumps, especially where humans have cut down a tree. Like other species that prefer exposed wood and not bark, it also grows on other human-made substrates like fences.
It can be rather immediately identified by its erect foliose structure, the intense yellow marginal soredia that look like a crust on the outer edges of the lichen, and a blue-green thallus. This species is almost always sterile, meaning the lichen only reproduces asexually by the dispersal of tiny particles of those beautiful yellow soredia.
Vulpicida pinastri on an old stump, a common substrate – Gregory Canyon, Boulder CO. Click to enlarge.
I tried to find more about the species’ natural history, and like many lichens there is not much out there. It is a Holarctic species distributed in northern hemisphere in both North America and Eurasia. It can be found in boreal forests and at higher elevations in mountains further south. That’s us in Colorado! One study1 used this species to show that some lichen substances are indeed toxic and are a possible way to limit anything from eating them. Another presentation2 made the bold claim that chemicals produced could have potential in the treatment of Alzheimer’s! At any rate surely there is more to learn about this lichen, but for now head up into the mountains and try and spend some time with your new acquaintance Vulpicida pinastri.
1 Pöykkö, H., Hyvärinen, M., & Bačkor, M. (2005). Removal of lichen secondary metabolites affects food choice and survival of lichenivorous moth larvae. Ecology, 86(10), 2623–2632. https://doi.org/10.1890/04-1632
2 Ureña Vacas, I. M., González Burgos, E., & Gómez-Serranillos, M. P. (2019). Antioxidant capacity and cholinesterase inhibitory activity of vulpicida pinastri lichen and its chemical composition. Proceedings of 5th International Electronic Conference on Medicinal Chemistry. https://doi.org/10.3390/ecmc2019-06317
Colorado Lichens and Friends 