Seen In A Different Light

Day 113: I have to admit that I have been in a foul mood, so dark that even science failed to pull me out of it yesterday, and for that I apologize to my readers. Today, I am seeing things in a different light, quite literally. The Usneas I had brought home from Orting were eluding identification until I put two of them under UV this morning. Despite some minor and acceptable morphological variation, both proved to be Usnea subfloridana, a bushier and shorter species than U. pacificana (which is also UV+). A Ramalina on the same twig also yielded a positive reaction to UV, if not to my efforts to identify it conclusively. My mood improved substantially once I'd put a name to the specimen.