Ascomycete, apothecia
Moderators: rjlittlefield, ChrisR, Chris S., Pau
Ascomycete, apothecia
Meiji EMZ-13TR
Apothecia are disc shaped fruiting bodies with a fertile center. This fertile center is known as the hymenium. Surrounding the hymenium is the exiple, the wall of the apothecia, outside of this is the thallus of the lichen.
These were growing on a dead, slick barked, hardwood tree limb. I took my pocket knife and cut the section away to bring home for my new lichen collection. The radial pattern displayed by this lichen was quite beautiful, it really makes you think or at least it does me, about how artistic nature really is and how something so small and wonderful can just be casually ignored. The whole lichen is about 22.5 cm X 21 cm, almost perfectly circular. The apothecia or apothecium are clustered in the center of the lichen. I also noticed that there are numerous other lichen speceis growing on this section of dead wood also, showing that at least those specimens are not limited to growing on one particular substrate, however, there are a few lichens that are.
Yes it was still on the tree there Doug. Your right, had it fallen off various other forms of fungi would have started growing on it and it would have become infested with ants, other ground dwelling insects and hords of Springtails. Sometimes however, one can find jelly fungi on rotting wood that is lying around on the ground. I believe there are some jelly fungi that are associated with lichens but I am not positive. Though these jelly fungi would, I assume, be hard to preserve in a collection, I suppose a simple photograph of the specimen would have to suffice.