Your assignment for today is to ID this creature from forest, seashore or stream bottom. At least you should classify it to a general group of living things.
More detail is possible, and it is quite interesting the ways this creature works in nature as well as in human economy and health.
Leave your guesses in comments, and mine is that somebody will know it right off. Prove me right.
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Lichen?
Comments & Identifications
Not so easy an ID. Below are the comments when I posted the picture on iNaturalist.org.
Your ID: Ramalina fastigiata
Posted by you 22 days ago
th0th’s ID: Rock Bushy Lichen (Ramalina intermedia)
Based mainly on the range maps. R. fastigiata is more common in the U.K and Ireland.
Posted by th0th 20 days ago
Your ID: Rock Bushy Lichen (Ramalina intermedia) Remove
Posted by you 20 days ago
tom_carlberg’s ID: Beard Lichens (Genus Usnea) Agree?
Hi – Ramalina intermedia is a stringy lichen, like the one in the photo, but doesn’t develop those circular structures with the weird tendrils coming off of them, and only grows on rock. This is a species of Usnea, and the disks are apothecia, where the fungal partner in the symbiosis gets to produce spores (too bad for the alga!).
Posted by tom_carlberg 4 days ago
Usnea is correct, and it has a lot of interesting natural history stories–except when a blogger’s ankles are being gnawed by a 10 month old. This is not a figure of speech, I assure you, and I have the soggy sox to prove it. So many for another time, more about Usnea.