#LichenJanuary at Ingleton, N Yorks

My friend Doris goes on a 3 mile walk most days - (well , when she's not doing something else) and invited me to join her on 4 January. But #LichenJanuary meant we had to stop and look at lichens -so the treck reduced itself to half a mile (and half a mile back).

First stop - the tarmac pavement outside the house and garden: Lecanora muralis  (Chewing Gum Lichen)  - - the edge of the thallus is foliose

The lane  headed south from the village in the direction of Bentham. We are just south of the South Craven Fault, and the glaciers left lots of rocks here. The stones in the wall are mostly sandstones from the Yoredale  Series. There are occasional lumps of slate, and whiter, rounded lumps of  limestone.

This lichen has an English name: Crabs-eye  Ochrolechia parella

Top left: Lecanora soralifera with powder patches (soralia) on the areoles (islands of thallus)
The grey lichen on the bottom right with black apothecia flush with the crust and areoles and black orothallus looks familiar.....

Acarospora fuscata - made of areoles (islands) which are sunken in their middles and higher at their edges. 

This is yellow green like Rhizocarpon geographicum - but I can't see the areoles that it should have.

Using a lens to look at details

This is a close up of what could be Lecanora gangaleoides. I need to scratch off some of the apothecia and crsut surface and see if the  lower medulla in the thallus is scarlety-orangy.

(on the other hand it could be Tephromela atra  -though that is whiter, and a section through an apothecium would reveal a purple layer in the apothecium

Acid rock - has the ubiquitous alga Klebsormidum crenulatum

Cladonia pocilum  I am guessing the wall is more basic here - it is next to moss Homalothecium sericeum which likes more basic conditions

Solenopsora candicans  - on limestone - This has a thick thallus and a bright white colour. The black apothecia have a pruinose surface.

Solenopsora candicans again, and Verrucaria baldensis?  with tiny sunken fruit bodies

Dermatocarpon miniatum - this nomally growns on vertical surfaces of shdy cliffs. Here is was growing flat on top of a newly placed capstone - so the lichen must have been growing on the rock before the rock was put on the wall.

Acrocordia conoidea on a limestone stone

Further along the road I realised that all the rocks in the wall here are limestone.. because the capstones were covered with
Ass Pee Sillier -- Aspicilia calcarea  This lichen likes the light and problalby the bird droppings too.

Skipping back a little way.. there was a walled side track, that was shaded by tall Leylandia trees, and in summer by nettles. On the shady vertical acid rock surfaces here was lots of orange- brown mottled Opegrapha gyrocarpa -see below

A primrose in the verge - and it is only 4 January

Growing in the mortar on a wall which I think had been recently cleared of ivy was this lichen... still waiting for a name

....... space for name ......


I hope you enjoyed your trip round with us.

Happy New Year and Happy #LichenJanuary