And a second field trip with Natalie Howe, with Tom McCoy riding shotgun. We entered Patuxent Research Refuge’s North Tract (that sign for Bald Eagle Road is easy to miss), signed in (apparently the complicated waivers about unexploded ordnance are a thing of the past), and covered a good 100m, maybe 150m, on the Forest Trail—followed by a short drive to the Hopkins Cemetery enclave on the refuge.
We found a little something that I so wanted to turn into a myxomycete, but iNat’s AI suggests a fungus, Phleogena faginea.
It takes a little gumption to accept that your field ID of most lichens is only going to get you to genus. We looked at a Lecanora, many different Cladonias (and), a Pyxine (get the UV flashlight!), and a Canoparmelia. We were pretty confident that we had a bit of Graphis scripta, as well as Lepraria finkii and Flavoparmelia baltimorensis (most of these IDs are still pending confirmation on iNat).
The Hopkins Cemetery offers a big drift of Cladonia reindeer lichen in relatively undisturbed turf.
Lichenologists in action, checking out the Cladonia.