A couple of lichens that are common in Gatineau park near Ottawa. 1. Grows on basic rocks. 2. Grows on trunks of Sugar Maple. Can someone help me please with their names?
Photo #1 is something like a Parmelia, Physcia or maybe Parmeliopsis? Nice shot - beautiful fruiting bodies! If you want to pursue it, you could try the lichen monitoring folks at EMAN (http://www.eman-rese.ca/eman/), particularly as they are familiar with species in that area. Lichens are generally much harder to ID by photo, (not that fungi in general are easy :-), as often you need to see really closeup top and underside, sometimes look at the colour of the layers inside using a razor, sometimes through a microscope at the result from staining. Lichens are often grouped by shape, like dust, crust, foliose, fruticose (or fruticulose? I forget). Photo #2 would be in the crust category I expect; flat to the surface, possibly within the surface, no visible lobes or projections. In my area, there are some crustose species associated with Alder bark, maybe in Ottawa area there are species associated specifically with Maple, which might narrow down the choices a bit.
The place to start is "lichens of the Ottawa Region" available from the Canadian Museum of Nature (www.nature.ca check under publications). The crustose lichen on the maple may be Whitewash Lichen but that is really a guess. Crustose lichens are pretty hard to ID, you need to get Irwin Brodo's publications to start with.
