Favourite Lichens Twofer

Day 155: No hike on the South Swofford Trail is complete without stopping to admire the Menegazzia terebrata, a greenish-grey foliose lichen whose lobes are perforated, supplying its common name of "Tree Flute." It's one of my favourites, and as I think about it, I suspect that my preference for certain lichen species may be based in the sound of their names. What a mellifluous word is "Menegazzia!" I was rolling it around on my tongue as I circled each Red Alder alongside the trail, looking for the optimal specimen to photograph, rejecting those which were too dry or in too much sun, when around on the shady north face of one tree I spotted this small rosette. Then I noticed another favourite, Graphis scripta, aka Script Lichen, its short, black lirellae etched into the bark like graffiti. "It's a twofer!" I said. "It doesn't get any better than this!" Okay, I admit I'm easily amused, but the South Swofford Trail never ceased to supply me with objects of interest, no matter when I walk it, or how many times. More will be appearing in my posts over the coming days.

A Sure Sign, Cardamine

Day 148: Hooray! I have been hunting for Cardamine for several weeks now and until today, hadn't even spotted cotyledon leaves (not that they're easy to find with this plant). The eruption of Cardamine means that spring is truly just around the corner. I was also surprised to see some early Oxalis flowering in the Cowlitz Wildlife area near Mossyrock Dam. I'd gone lichen hunting, wanting to breathe good, pure air and give my winter lungs a workout. I may have gone into "social distancing" mode, but I will continue to take exercise in the superlative atmosphere of our Pacific Northwest forests. Today's choice of trail took me up a few small hills whose summits I had not previously attained, and one section of the pathway was so lined with Red Alder hosting Menegazzia terebrata (Tree Flute lichen) that it shall henceforth be known the Menegazzia Spur in my mental atlas of botanical waypoints. As I mentioned a few days ago, now that I've identified it, I'm finding it everywhere. No complaints from me on that score! It's also one of my favourite spots for early Cardamine, so maybe I was cheating just a little, hunting it down where I knew it would be easiest to find.

Menegazzia Terebrata

Day 140: You know how it goes. You spot something you've never seen before...a Greater Spotted Purple Jayfinch or a Volkswagen painted to look like a coconut jellybean...and you think, "Wow! Look what I found!" Then in the next week or two, you see ten or twenty more of them (whatever "they" are). At the very least, it makes you wonder if there is a sudden proliferation of "them," or perhaps it inclines you to reevaluate your powers of observation. I don't know how many times I've walked past this particular Red Alder on the South Swofford Trail thinking, "Yeah, yeah, that's another Hypogymnia" as I swept by, but while on the trail earlier this week, its "rosettishness" inspired me to take a closer look. Hypogymnias don't typically form rosettes, but several superficially similar species do. Even from a distance of six feet, I could tell this was no Hypogymnia. No, it was in fact a Menegazzia, a genus I only recently observed for the first time in Olympia. How had I missed it every single other bloody time I'd walked past the Swofford tree? The perforations in the lobes were obvious, as were the powdery soredia. I nicked a small sample, dropped it in one of the test tubes I always carry and brought it home for analysis, where I confirmed it as Menegazzia terebrata, aka Tree Flute. Now I s'pose I'll be finding them everywhere. You won't hear me complain.

Menegazzia Terebrata, Tree Flute

Day 82: Oh, let's start the New Year off right with finding a "life list" lichen on January 1! We weren't ten feet away from the actual trailhead at Grass Lake before I checked up short to investigate the bark of a young alder. Yonit understood...you can't take Crow into the woods with any expectation of going directly from Point A to Point B...and she was very patient as I checked multiple specimens of an unknown lichen for characteristics I could use in making an identification. The object of my curiosity looked superficially like a Hypogymnia, but several macroscopic features spoke against that genus. First of all, it was growing in neat rosettes. Hypogymniae tend to sprawl. Secondly, although the lobes were puffy like a Hypogymnia, the upper surface was perforated, almost every lobe having at least one small hole in evidence. Muttering to myself, "Nope, not Hypogymnia...no, not Parmeliopsis...this one's going to take some diggin'..." I rejoined Yonit and we continued down the trail after I'd taken photos. Fully expecting it to either present multiple options for an ID or to defeat me entirely, I settled in first with McCune's "Macrolichens of the Pacific Northwest" and turned almost immediately to the correct page. OMG! The perforations defined it as Menegazzia, going on to explain that those holes made the genus easy to identify, even for novices. Further delving into the books to find its range narrowed the options to M. terebrata, otherwise known as "Treeflute" or "Hole-punch Lichen." A similar species (M. subsimilis) grows in a narrow band along the Washington coast. Wikipedia says that the genus was described by Veronese Abramo Massalongo in 1854. He named it for his friend, naturalist Luigi Menegazzi. "Menegazzia!" What a marvelous word! And that said, something which is "terebrate" (the second half of the binomial) exhibits punch-like holes or bore holes...you know, like a flute. I can almost imagine faerie chamber music drifting through the woods at Grass Lake on a warm summer night. Mozart on a lichen flute! I'll hear it in my dreams: breathy, delicate, and the frogs will dance.