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Old 08-04-2009, 12:19 AM
AlanS AlanS is offline
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Join Date: May 2007
Location: Renfrewshire, W. Scotland
Posts: 693
Re: Two more Cladonia's for ID Help

Hi again Mike,

I am supposed to be devising a student test for tomorrow, but thank you (I think) for the excuse for displacement activity.

1. Sorry, not Cladonia bellidiflora, which has distinctive, palmately-lobed blue-green to yellow-green squamules clothing the entire podetium from base to tip, diminishing in size upwards.
Your lichen is going to be red-fruited (currently it has small red pycnidia), which puts it in the same group as bellidiflora, but it lacks the squamules and it is densely sorediate, which bellidiflora never is.

This is C. polydactyla. Red pycnidia/apothecia AND cup-forming AND densely grey sorediate. Common and very variable.

2. Most or all is C. fimbriata. The cups narrow very abruptly into the cylindrical stems and they are densely grey-powdery sorediate.
C. chlorophaea is also variable (actually an aggregate of several, morphologically poorly defined species differing in chemistry), but the usual variant is more coarsely granular and the cup tapers more into the stalk. It is possible that you do have C. chlorophaea at the right of the photograph, but most likely this is just variation within C. fimbriata.

Oh well, back to writing this test. (Now can I still have Buffy the Vampire Slayer as one of the multiple choice answers - not the correct one! - or has popular culture moved on? Will I need to explain Buffy to the Chinese member of the class? Oh well, one more year ...)

Alan
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