red lichen (?) I´m writing from north-east Germany (Vorpommern). In a quercus-betula-pinus-wood I found a lichen-like organism on dead quercus-branches, which I can´t find in any of my identification books or in the internet. It has a light pink color and lies flat on the branches. The contact tissue to the wood is black, no rhicines are visible. On the surface there are sorale-like tissue disruptions, looks a bit like a Graphis- or Opegrapha-species. There are no leaves detectable, the whole thallus is uniform in height, like a thick painting on the tree. For a myxomycete it was too stable and dry. It covered all the upper tree, but not the stem. Who can help me to identify this species?
Re: red lichen (?) Opegrapha herbarum? A bit of a guess. You wouldn't happen to have a photograph, would you?
Re: red lichen (?) Yes, I'd love to see a photograph too. From your description, it sounds like a foliose type, but Opegrapha is crustose, sometimes with the thallus imbedded in the substrate. Your photo link, Daniel, looks to me as though it's on granite, not bark, with only the black fruiting bodies visible. But that's just a guess too.
Re: red lichen (?) hamadryad, if you go to the specific page for the photograph, it mentions "on tree". It isn't hard to imagine from the photo that it is perhaps wrongly labelled, though.
Re: red lichen (?) Thanks, Daniel, I didn't see the label, only the photo. Think I'll stick with my original take on it tho, and I suppose mislabeling is possible. Still, that's a neat website, so thanks... Best, Sally
Re: red lichen (?) Hello Daniel, unfortunately I haven´t got a photo of the organism yet but I got a sample of it at home. It´s completely different to the Opegrapha species you showed me. In fact, it doesn´t look like a lichen at all. It´s not crustose but it also doesn´t have leaves. I hope I can manage to do a photo in the next days (don´t have a digital camera myself). Til then, Annie O
Re: red lichen (?) Annie-- do you have a scanner? Is it flat enough you could get us an image that way?
Re: red lichen (?) The object is not flat, it´s surrounding the tree entirely. I´ll try anyway to scan it. Thanks for the idea.
Re: red lichen (?) Finally... the photo. By wetting the object it starts to smell fungus-like and the colour changes to a darker red. The diameter of the stick is about 1 cm, the length is about 4 cm.
Guten Tag Annie O, I merged your latest post into the original thread. That bumps the original thread back up to the top of the list so that people see it again. I did not think people would understand the post without the context. And better to keep the conversation in one thread. Welcome to the forums,
Sorry, Annie-- I had "no idea" as you said. I had missed the first photo, which is the best. It seems like it could be a species of Graphis or Graphina, rather than Opegrapha, but clearly something with lirellae (the elongated black structures). I don't have any references for Germany, but I'm sending the link on to a lichen expert, who may be able to help us...
Hello everybody! Last week I found this strange organism again in Menz, Fürstenberg, Brandenburg. It grows on Sambucus, and this time it was obviously: it´s a fungus! It showed the typical thallus of a tree fungus like Pycnoporus or Laccaria (don´t know exactly if I´m right with the comparision). No new lichen, unfortunately, to be named after me ;)
Re: red lichen (?) Here are 2 photos. It is just like an orange/red dusting on the bark. It is there all the year round and increases slightly each year, to no detriment of the oak tree.
