Day 113: As soon as I got home from Pack Forest yesterday, I started asking myself why I had walked right past this delightful specimen without stopping to take a picture. I knew it was unique, just as surely as I knew that I would not be returning by the same route on the way down, and yet I did not stop. I even remarked on it to myself at the time, remembering that I'd seen it in Brodo and that it had cropped up in the same location as the Stinkhorns I'd found previously. At home, I took myself to task for the omission and resolved to put it to rights today, rain or shine.
In the political arena, a "mugwump" is a person who can't decide which way to vote. I think that term could also apply to Multiclavula. Brodo includes it in "Lichens of North America" because it exists only in cooperation with an algal species; however, he qualifies his entry by saying that it "does not really qualify as a lichen because its association with the algae, although apparently obligate, does not produce a special thallus structure of any kind." In other words, Multiclavula is somewhere between a fungus and a lichen, having characteristics of both which therefore put it in a different category than either. It is neither a true lichen nor 100% fungal. It's a mugwump. It can't make up its mind.
There are several species of Multiclavula known to occur in the US. The two Pacific Northwest species are indistinguishable without microscopic analysis, and even that is not always definitive unless the spores exceed a certain size. Unfortunately, the sample I'd tucked in my pocket went missing in transit.
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