Created: 2008-09-30 13:43:18

By: Jason Hollinger (jason)

Summary: Holy lichens, batman!

Comment: Five feet by one foot?? Cool! Definitely stick this one under your fancy scope and post some photos. (Get out the knife if you have to — your tree will heal — it’s all in the name of Science!) I’d love to know what kind of lichen is that aggressive.

I’ll bet nine-to-one the color differences are an artifact of automatic-color-balancing on the camera. They do the best they can, but they don’t always get it right! I’d be surprised to find multiple species with such an aggressive growth habit in the same place. But, yes, while color can vary tremendously in many lichens, I would tend to agree in this case that cream vs bluish-white would indicate different species. Especially since there is no variation within a given specimen.