Clustered Coral

Description:

A light grey to white fruticose lichen forming erect tufts. The branches are round, solid, smooth; cortex shiny; soredia and isidia absent, though slender branchlets may function as propagules; apothecia terminal, spherical.

Habitat:

Spotted on old growth fir trees at Federation Forest State Park in Washington state. Range is Alaska to California with rare inland disjuncts to northern Idaho (McCune and Geiser 2009) and northwest Montana.

Notes:

The perplexing morphological variation in form of the S. globosus complex, to which this species belongs, has created much confusion, including misapplication of S. tuckermanii to what is now S. venerabilis. Hognabba and Wedine (2003) demonstrated three distinct evoluntionary lines: S. globosus growing on the ground in arctic-alpine habitats and as an epiphyte in Europe; S. tuckermanii, a Pacific Northwest epiphyte with many coralloid branches; and S. venerabilis, a Pacific Northwest epiphyte with few coralloid branches (McCune and Geiser 2009).