Another lichen?

[CloudedYellow]

Any ideas as to the id of this, a lichen I presume?

1.5cm across, flat with upturned margins like a very small lilly pad, growing on felled Willow in Notts.

Thanks

Richard

[C C]

Never seen anything like it Could it be some type of liverwort?

[FungiJohn]

Its certainly different. I've never seen anything like it!

[CloudedYellow]

Thanks,

I will ask elsewhere and report back if I get an id.

Richard

[C C]

Originally Posted by CloudedYellow

Thanks,

I will ask elsewhere and report back if I get an id.

Richard

Hi Richard, just wondering if you found out what it was. Itching to know

Christian.

[ollyk]

Don't you know? It's a fairy garden pool (with collapsible sides of the type regularly seen on 'you've been framed') but they also turn it upside down and use it as a trampoline in the summer. You must have surprised them to leave it out in the open like that

Sorry can't help with an i.d. but it looks pretty interesting! Well spotted!

[AlanS]

This is poorly developed but elderly Datronia mollis, one of the bracket fungi and not a lichen. As well as being old, the surface has been colonised by green algae, so it is not looking very typical.

It usually forms more extensive and distinct brackets, but small, circular fruitbodies like this one are not unusual. The pores are "irpicoid" - very irregular and angled.

Many pictures show the more usual, extended brackets but there is a splendid (i.e. expensive!) new Italian monograph on polypores (Fungi Europaei vol. 10) with an excellent photograph of this same growth form.

Another fungus that can look very similar when old and grey, also forming small, circular colonies and with the same type of pores, is Schizopora paradoxa, very common on fallen wood. However it does not form brackets at all, and we do see the narrow upper bracket surface in Richard's photograph. (S. paradoxa is much lighter in colour when fresh.)

Alan

[CloudedYellow]

Thank you Alan, you are a star!!

The photo as been sitting in my unknown directory and, like Christian, I have been itching to know. I would never have guessed D. mollis but now with the eye of faith, it does look to have a mazegill type surface.

Richard