Common Green Shield

Description:

The lichen was found as my group and I were entering the trail that is on our school grounds. Kingdom: Fungi Division: Ascomycota Class: Lecanoromycetes Order: Lecanorales Family: Parmeliaceae Genus: Flavoparmelia Species: F. caperata

Habitat:

The habitat of the Fructicose lichen is that it grew or is growing on a tree. It has a greenish color with a slight amount of gray. There was snow on the ground. A lot of the lichen was on the trees or on fallen branches.

Notes:

My field notes are that we went outside to look for lichen. The day was January 18th, 2012. We were not looking for any particular type of lichen though. There was a marvelous selection that was right on the school grounds! There were smaller pieces and there were rather big pieces as well. Some of them were green and some were almost a brownish color. We took many pictures of them also. A lot of the lichen looked like they had obtained that area for a while. It was not raining and there was a crusty layer of atmospheric water vapors on the ground. Most of the lichen were on a woody perennial plants. Some of them were on ginormous evergreen coniferous trees that has clusters of long, needle-shaped leaves. Temperate deciduous forest biome is the biome of the lichen in our area. One of the lichen that I identified is the Fructicose... -they have branches with it’s fungal layer outside,its algal layer was within. -no rhizines -vertical growth pattern -odd shaped structures such as globets; threads -Fruiticose lichens are either growing on the ground, or on a shrub or a tree. With a metric ruler, the Fruiticose lichen that we found is 3 cm by 2 cm thick.