Deal's car park trees

In Deal the lichens were swollen on the Ash tree trunks in Sainsbury's car park after heavy rain. In this first view the central grey-green Flavoparmelia species is dominant, with the orange Xanthoria in smaller patches to the right.

Here is a closer view of a slightly different area below and to the right of the Flavoparmelia. Here is the Lecidella elaeochroma with the black borderless fruit.

The greyish jam tarts to the bottom right are probably Lecanora chlarotera, rather crowded, but I do not know what the one on the top left, even more crowded, is. It is however possible that they are the same species. There is a small frond of possibly Parmelia rather than Physcia, but again it is rather difficult to tell.

The Ash trees were showing a little Chalara dieback, but not terminal yet.

Next to the railway station there are three or four Snow Gums, Eucalyptus pauciflors ssp niphophila, with the most amazing trunks.

Further along in the Network Rail car park there were a couple of newly planted trees (very nice to see)  including this one, which looked like a nice Crab Apple.

By the station fence itself there were two quite well established Holm Oak (Quercus ilex) trees in flower, and with the pale new leaves and shoots clothing the dark older ones further in to the canopy.

This is (I think) a fairly typical young Holm Oak trunk with splitting blackish bark.

In a car park nearer the sea, there were good numbers of Norway Maple, Acer platanoides, showing quite a bit of dieback.

There was also a very nice group of Birches, Betula spp.

Many of the tree planting beds show some excellent gardening:

This was an excellent bed in Sainsbury's of all places!

Lichen on the Blean

It seemed to be quite a coincidence that I stopped to take a photo of a fairly obvious lichen that proved to be one of the key species noted in the area, Thelotrema lepadinum. There are about 20 official records in TR on the NBN database, all in The Blean or down towards Mersham.

It has an unusual appearance as the apothecial bounday membrane is separated from the thallus wall, and appears as a papery membrane inside the throat of the volcano-like apothecia. It is regarded in East Kent as an indicator of an ancient woodland site - possibly. There are no records from West Kent at present. It is much commoner in the north and west of the UK.

The above photo was taken from quite a large well-established patch.

Here is a newer patch appearing on a fairly smooth-barked tree:

Lichens on trees at Yalding Fen

Had a lovely day with the Ash Project and Ishpi Blatchley looking at lichens on trees, particularly Ash Trees, wood and other substrates.

This is one of the common bark lichens we found, Parmelia sulcata, with its exuberant soralia developed from pseudocyphellae obviously in the centre of the thallus, its lovely grey lobes, brown to black on the undersurface.

This I think is a Physcia species, with the narrow lobes, in this case growing on wood, the hand-rail of a footbridge between the central pond and the marsh with the duckboard path. I think it is quite likely to be Physcia tenella, but I couldn't see any developed apothecia, or indeed any of the tiny black spots or pycnidia that you often see in pictures. The cilia on the edges of the lobes are quite visible, so it could perhaps be P. adscencens or P. tenella.

In the more established part of the lichen, the soredia make it look much more fuzzy.

This is an interesting photo of another section of the bridge timbers, with a grey foliose lichen with pseudocyphellae on the lobe to the bottom left of the photo. There are also some tiny black pimples on a surface in front, on the other section of timber.

Here are three different lichens on the top surface of the main bridge timber rail:

Evernia prunastri on an oak or willow perhaps

Usnea?

Grey lichen with black jam tart apothecia, perhaps Lecidella elaeochroma (Ach.) M.Choisy, slightly overgrown by a Physcia species, and with some limited black margins to be seen.

This is the white paint lichen, Phlyctis argena, on one of the trees along the driveway into Great Comp garden. In this instance I couldn't see see soredia (the usual description is soredia abundant or rare) or any apothecia (usual description is rare, but if found they should be dark grey, pruinose, with large muriform spores).

Hothfield Churchyard lichens

Ros Bennett took us on a fascinating tour of Hothfield Common and then Hothfield churchyard to search for lichens:

Aspicilia

Aspicilia calcarea. This is the lichen described as being like big white splashes of paint on rocks such as hard limestone (as in the British Lichens website) - or in this case walls and tombstones. In overall appearance it is a very white rounded splash. In detail however it is described as being a slightly bluish-white, with one or more unevenly outlined apothecia buried into areolae, with quite a distinct margin to the thallus. In this picture there are some areas of brownish stains, where there are fewer apothecia present.

The picture below of this thallus from Hothfield is much less cropped:

The Aspicilia genus is generally characterised by its largely sunken "apothecia" although they do project normally from time to time. The genus also often has a slightly cracked to distinctly areolate appearance of a generally light coloured thallus on rocks, usually (but not invariably) calcareous. The growth form is often variable, sometimes dramatically so.

There is a quite similar species of Aspicilia found fairly regularly on concrete in towns, Aspicilia contorta subsp. hoffmanniana.

Caloplaca

This is probably one of the Caloplaca species, and should I think be Caloplaca aurantia, with flattened lobes on the placodioid margins. That feature distinguishes it from another common churchyard lichen, Caloplaca flavescens, which has more convex lobes.

This species has darker apothecia, orange to dark brown as they go over. Between the older thallus and the fresh creamy orange lobes, there may appear an apparently lighter zone.

Here is a more cropped photo of the marginal lobes, emphasising the flattened lobes. The Caloplaca is fighting for space with the white crustose species.

Caloplaca teicholyta is a grey species, that looks rather "dirty" with some patches darker than others.

Here is a close-up of the "coral-like" lobules.

Haematomma

This should be Haematomma ochroleucum in both its forms, the whitish (var. porphyrium, lacking usnic acid) and the yellow-grey, var. ochroleucum, with usnic acid). The surface is quite powdery, leprose or farinose.

A blustery Mote Park with Lichens

Ramalina

There is supposed to be a very large Holm Oak there, Quercus ilex, listed In Bean's Trees and Shrubs, "Mote Park, Kent, 88 × 8 ft (1984);" but I do not remember seeing it at all! I wonder if there is a map of the Mote Park Trees? I shall have to ask Jadie.

This crustose lichen is I think a species of Lecanora, a very common species quite tolerant of high aerial Nitrogen, which Maidstone appears to be very subject to. The tan to brown centres of the "jam-tart" apothecia fruits are just visible, they should become more obvious later. This might be L. chlarotera, one of the commonest species of this very difficult complex.

 
This is the second extremely common crustose species we found, with black "jam tart" fruits and I think this is probably a Lecidiella species such as L. elaeochroma.

I think this one below is a Parmelia species, perhaps P. sulcata. The lobes of this species are stated to have distinct white lines and dots along which soralia form, and you can see the white "crinkling and dotting in this photo. The thallus is said to be rather flat, which I would not have said was obvious in the picture. The closely related P. encryptata can only be separated by DNA analysis.

This is Flavoparmelia caperata, which is said to be apple-green. I think the colouring is easier to see a) in real life, and b) from a distance. Although this is difficult to see in the image below, compare the greeny "greyness" in this particular thallus to that of the very grey lichen to the bottom right, possibly the Parmelia.

Flavoparmelia is not at all common at Mote Park, where there is probably too much N in the air for this species, and we only found this on one of the half dozen trees we looked at. The photosymbiont in Flavoparmelia caperata is thought to be Trebouxia (or Pseudotrebouxia?) gelatinosa, http://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/0-306-48173-1_23#page-2, which is thought to be able to produce zoospores and potentially free-living colonies, thus allowing later recombination with other strains of the fungal mycobiont http://journals.cambridge.org/action/displayAbstract?fromPage=online&aid=960512.

This large tree trunk is covered in two main lichens, one of the common Xanthoria species (one common one is X. parietina) almost reliant on high N. levels, and then a grey Physcia sp. with very narrow lobes in comparison to the Parmelia we looked at earlier.

This is I think a Phaeophyscia species, a foliose grey lichen very lobulate at the margins, next to developing thalli of Xanthoria: