Day 86: Holy soredia, Batman! Another life-list lichen, and this one right in my OWN BACK YARD! Winter always leaves me struggling for post material, and I find myself circling my garden spaces like the guy who keeps making trips to the refrigerator to see if anything new to eat has somehow magically appeared. I was certainly not expecting a new species (new genus, actually) to show up on the pussywillow at the corner of my garage. At first, I thought it was a Hypogymnia, but when I broke off a piece to check the colour of the medullary ceiling, I discovered it wasn't tubular at all. The lobes were a single layer, pale yellowish-green on top, black underneath. Was it a Parmeliopsis? No. Examination under the microscope showed branched rhizines confined to the lobe margins. Those of Parmeliopsis are unbranched. Powdery soredia populated the tips of the lobes. "Hmmm...got a little problem here," I said, and began paging through the forty-pound field guide back to front, hoping to find it before needing to break out the chemicals. At H, I came to a screeching halt. "Hypotrachyna sinuosa! Life-list! Bingo!" No doubt about it: it fit all the parameters. Also known as "Green Loop Lichen," it prefers humid, open forest and occurs on small branches of various types of bark. If finding two life-list species in the first week of 2020 is any indication of things to come, this should be a spectacular year, botanically speaking.
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