Cladonia Cup Lichen
Cladonia fimbriata
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Tiny grey-green golf tees standing up out of the moss — miniature and easily missed.
A small lichen that produces distinctive stalked cups — like miniature goblets or golf tees — a few millimetres across, grey-green and covered in a fine granular powder, rising from a mat of small scales. It grows on peaty soil, rotting stumps, wall tops, mossy banks and old fence posts throughout the Dumfries area.
Behaviour
The cups are reproductive structures, and rain falling into them splashes out the granules, each of which contains both fungal and algal partners and can start a new lichen — an efficient way of dispersing a symbiosis that must travel as a pair. Cladonia lichens are slow-growing and characteristic of undisturbed acid ground, and are a major component of heath and bog surfaces.
When to see it
Quick facts
- Family
- Cladoniaceae
- Size
- Cups 3–20 mm tall
- Status
- Native; common on acid, undisturbed ground
Photo by Vasyliuk Oleksij, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons