Sunday, 1 November 2015

Acrocordia conoidea - in a Settle garden and on Settle - Langcliffe High Road


 Learn your lichens 3.
Learn your Lichens Series
1. Arthonia radiata

I first met this lichen, with its big pale pink thallus and large protruding black fruiting bodies  in Settle, in a friend's garden in Townhead Avenue, on the limestone wall, that was also the lower-side wall of the highroad from Settle To Langcliffe.  (see lower part of this post) - 




To share it with the public - I would have to find it in a public place so I set off from Settle along the High Road  on 30 Oct.

I put my red knife next to a patch.
- view looking back to Settle.
I have barely passed
the gates to Castleberg
In fact there was lots of it, conveniently at eye level. It is distinctive because the black perithecia are 1mm in diameter and regularly spaced. The thallus is pinkish.



Pollution level 6 ( it needs fairly clean air)
It is called Acrocordia because the summit/tip of its fruiting bodies apparently heart shaped.
Certainly this species had relatively cone shaped fruiting bodies - 


Here it is

In fact it was another 100 yards or so till I got to the wall above my friend's house.. and there was lots more on the wall on the upper side of the road, and a tiny patch on the road side of their garden wall.



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Original post:
On 26 October I was wandering round Settle in the late autumn sunlight looking for Lichens in distinctive locations to photograph. "Come and photograph mine" said Barbara A.. So up I went to their house on Townhead Avenue - the garden backs onto the High Road (Highway?) from Settle to Langcliffe. I admired her Hydrangeas and Maiden-hair Spleenwort and almost-over Bloody Cranes-bill and Marjoram.

On the vertical hard limestone rocks of the wall of The High Road are lots of patches of this pinkish lichen with big (1mm) black protruding fruiting bodies:  Acrocordia conoidea

and pale grey green spaces where the fruiting bodies have dropped out.









On the bark of the tree trunk was Melanelixia glabratula






Further round on the trunk was Fuscidea lightfootii (the green one on the right, with large black fruiting bodies)


I think this is Phlyctis argena on the tree bark- I need to go back with some NaOH to check


This is on the footpath in the garden - needs some thought.

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