Day 61: This little bugger threw me for a loop. I discovered many examples of it while hiking recently in Nisqually State Park, and I thought I recognized it by the knobby, sorediate tips of the lobes. That said, it didn't want to fit into the description of Hypogymnia hultenii because (as I discovered when looking back at my own post from October 14), hultenii was an exclusively coastal species. I'd seen it at H. J. Carroll Park in Chimacum! So, it was back to the forty-pound field guide (Brodo's Lichens of North America) and more head-scratching because hultenii had originally been classified as a Cavernularia. As I am accustomed to doing any time I encounter a Hypogymnia, I had peeled the layers apart to examine the medullary ceiling (the underside of the top surface) and had noted that it was a light grey-tan. That and the sorediate lobe tips identified it as Hypogymnia tubulosa (Powder-headed Tube Lichen). Sure enough, when I re-read the information listed under "Cavernularia hultenii" (now Hypogymnia hultenii), it compared it to H. tubulosa. It's always nice when the haystack yields up the needle without having to resort to chem tests.
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