Fringed Chocolate Chip Lichen
What a find! I decided to take a break from work while I was out exploring Sugarloaf to prep for a weekend class I'm bringing there. So, I made my way up to one of the rivers in the area. The rocks were really cool here, but I didn't have very high hopes for finding any interesting plants or lichens. I hadn't really seen many of the lichens that I would expect to see in a habitat like this. I was on somewhat of a time-crunch to get back and told myself that I'd turn around after 10 more minutes of walking up the river. The time passed, but there was a section of rock that jutted out a little further and looked promising. I told myself I would turn around after I reached that point. Thank goodness that I pushed back on my self imposed time limit. The wall right before the rock jutted out caught my eye as it looked quite moist and shaded. There were plenty of mosses, liverworts, and Nostoc communities growing on it. Intermixed with all this was fringed chocolate chip lich...