Once the fall leaves are busy making mulch on the ground, it's a good time to stop and look at the exposed tree trunks and stumps, each with its own crop of mosses and lichens. The unnamed trail I was following passed through a mixed forest, half evergreens, half deciduous trees, mostly red alder, cottonwood, and various maples.
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| Black cottonwood; mid-size tree, with its mossy earmuffs. |
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| Two persistent leaves. Cottonwood. |
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| Orange jelly fungus. Looking closely, the surface even has the bumpy texture of an orange peel. |
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| Lipstick cladonia on a rotting log |
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| And these miniature pumpkin pies are a barnacle lichen, Thelotrema lepadinum. |
The genus name, "
Thelotrema" comes from the Greek for "perforated nipple", which accurately describes the immature "barnacles". "
Lepadinum" means "like limpets". Someone got their intertidal critters mixed up.
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| Red alder, Alnus rubra. With bark barnacles and pencil script lichen. |
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| Red alder, moss, and lichens |
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| Zooming in. The little branching lines are the fruiting bodies of Pencil script lichen, Graphis scripta. |
The pale patches are the main body of the lichen; it's a crust lichen, making smooth writing surfaces on trees in shady woods.
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| The path. Well travelled, wide enough for the occasional vehicle. |
Still round the corner we may meet
A sudden tree or standing stone
That none have seen but we alone.
(From JRR Tolkien, "Walking song")
