Identification of Lichen in Paraguay

Vinke · #1 November 19th, 2005, 11:12 AM

Hello!

We are living in Paraguay and are enthusiast in nature. At the moment we are renewing our homepage and there ist a beautiful lichen of the Gran Chaco, Paraguay to be identified.

We would be lucky to hear what genus or species we photographed

With best regards
Thomas & Sabine

www.chaco-wildlife.org

**OstaraGypsy** · #2 November 19th, 2005, 12:15 PM

I do not know what type of Lichen you have photographed, but i am curious to hear the answer!

mainly i am posting just to let you know i visited your webpage - What beautiful photographs!! what a great view into Paraguay!!

**Joe Keller** · #3 November 19th, 2005, 11:34 PM

It reminds me of Letharia vulpina. I don't know if that occurs in Paraguay, but it might be a place to start. Joe

Vinke · #4 November 21st, 2005, 06:02 AM

Hello!

Thanks for praise and thanks for the guess. We tried to find out more about Letharia vulpina. But this does not work out. We read it needs winter wet and summer dry climate and here it's exactly the other way around. Our climate here is very dry and if it rains, then in summer. We have it very hot (up to 45 °C) ans winter is between 0 °C and 35 °C, dry.

Maybe this list list of Lichen of Paraguay is a help. We do not know enough about lichen even to reduce it to a genus or some more likely species where we can beginn to search the web. Would be great, if somebody likes to help....

Best regards
Thomas & Sabine

**wrygrass** · #5 November 21st, 2005, 07:23 AM

Hi,

If the yellow color of the photograph is the actual color, then you might check out the
Teloschistes genus. Do a google image search for the two species on your list. Also if those don't fit, you might try the Ramalina and Usnea genera. I wasn't able to get many results on the species on your list from the latter two genera on google however, but you might try a local school or university web site, or a Paraguayan national park or wildlife preserve if such exists. If they don't have a lichen database, they might be able to point you to a local one. The growth pattern is called fruticose and so any such genus might apply. If you do find a local on line photo database, I would really appreciate it if you forwarded that information to the forum here. I would be very curious as to the differences in lichen growth between here and Paraguay.

I too looked at your web site and also was greatly impressed.

Harry

**hamadryad** · #6 November 21st, 2005, 07:52 AM

You might take a look at www.lichen.com, if you haven't already, which has a great photo gallery of North American lichens. Here's the link to their photo of L. vulpina: http://lichen.com/bigpix/Lvulpina.html

Is the color accurate? Seems the Letharias would be a little more neon-greenish than yellow, but I'm not too familiar. I'd say also try Ramalina, but I think not Usnea as it lacks the yellow... Did not see Letharia on your Paraguay list (great site, thanks), but I'll look it over to see if anything else seems to suggest itself.

Good luck-- and thanks for the great photos on your website! The snakes were wonderful... <grin>

**hamadryad** · #7 November 21st, 2005, 08:05 AM

If you do search, correct spelling is Teloschistes. It seems like a good genus to explore; several species occur is south and west coast of US. The Ramalinas and Evernias I found are too green. There is also a yellow (vulpinic acid) species of Bryoria in the Pacific NW...

Of the two Teloschistes species on your list, T. flavicans seems most likely as it lacks the disks (apothecia) that are present in T. exilis.

Vinke · #8 November 21st, 2005, 02:32 PM

Hi all,

we believe too that we took this picture of Teloschistes flavicans. The yellow really fits well, the habitat description (windy, sunny, dry) fits perfect and we learned that usually you make not a picture of a very rare species, if you are not in your own special knowledge!

There is another interesting lichen story here in Paraguay. Many years ago Jakob Unger, a nature scientist, started to work on a collection of animals of the Chaco here in Paraguay (now all to visit in the Museo Jakob Unger). Because everything was rare here in the wild, which was really wild in that times (1930-1950) he had the idea to stuff the animals with a lichen. We will ask more about it, so we can send a picture if you are interesteded in that. The stuffed animals are still to see and the lichen does it's job properly until now, according to his son!

Because we had such a success we will try our luck in another thread with a fungus!

So thank you all!
Thomas & Sabine

***Daniel Mosquin*** · #9 November 21st, 2005, 03:39 PM

Thank you all, reading through this thread has made my day. Vinke, I'd be very interested to hear that story. Also, I'll be linking to your site on Wednesday's Botany Photo of the Day.

**wrygrass** · #10 November 22nd, 2005, 03:20 AM

Even the most common things have great beauty on any given day. And when I come across something new, no matter how ordinary, it is rare to me. :)

Quote:

...usually you make not a picture of a very rare species, if you are not in your own special knowledge!

Harry

Vinke · #11 December 11th, 2005, 06:05 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Daniel Mosquin

Thank you all, reading through this thread has made my day. Vinke, I'd be very interested to hear that story. Also, I'll be linking to your site on Wednesday's Botany Photo of the Day.

So it spent a while, but finally we have pictures of the lichen which was used for stuffing animals at the Museo Jakob Unger in Filadelfia.

Klick here
and here
and here to see how many are in one tree

Hope you enjoy the pictures. By the way we missed the picture at the Botany Photo of the Day. Which one did you choose? We have very slow internet and so it's very hard to look through them, but the pictures we saw are really beautiful. How do you find every day so beautiful pictures?

Best wishes
Thomas & Sabine

***Daniel Mosquin*** · #12 December 14th, 2005, 02:37 PM

Interesting lichen, do you have a species name? It looks very much like some of the lichens in this region.

Vinke, the BPotD entry was this one: Acer carpinifolium. I apologize about the size of the images, as I can understand why they take a long time to load for a slow connection - but I prefer to have them be of a high quaility.

As for finding beautiful pictures ... well, it helps being at a botanical garden. Always something to see!

Vinke · #13 December 14th, 2005, 02:56 PM

Hi Daniel,

sorry, we do not know a scientific name of the lichen, but we can say where it is to find. Is only to find at the Quebracho blanco, Aspidosperma quebracho-blanco. This tree is very common and the indegenous people make medicin against diarrhea of the bark and children use the seeds as "money".

Thank you very much for your nice words at BPotD :-)
It's great to have a place where you can get answers :-)

Thomas & Sabine

Patrik · #14 May 3rd, 2006, 05:26 AM

Hi
I've been working with Teloschistes for my PhD for several years, so I know most species rather well. It is just as you already have figured out T. flavicans that you have. It can also have apothecia, just as T. exilis, but that is more rare.

The stuffing material is a species of Usnea. The taxonomy in Usnea is very difficult and I would not dare to put a name on it.