Tuesday 20 October 2009

A bad case of lungwort



This post links to a piece on Stuart Dunlop's Donegal Wildlife blog about the lungwort. The first time I ever really noticed this impressive lichen was on the west coast of Scotland in May this year.  Mistakenly I had the idea that there was just one 'lungwort' and so didn't check it out properly. From Stuart's post, I see that there are at least two species - which leaves me wondering which one I was looking at. I'm hoping that Stuart, or indeed anyone else, can help me out here.
Posted by Nyctalus at 22:24
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2 comments:

  1. Stuart21 October 2009 at 09:15

    Looks fine for Lobaria pulmonaria to me, with all those surface veins and indentations. Nice to see the brown fruit-bodies, too. (Those are purely fungal and eject only fungal spores. Those spores need to fortuitously end up next to the correct alga for the spore to start a new viable specimen.)

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  2. Nyctalus22 October 2009 at 21:52

    Thanks very much Stuart. All in all its a most peculiar arrangement but its win-win-win I guess - for the fungus, the alga and the tree.

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