Growing on north face of boulder in grassland. Densely isidiate without apothecia. Medulla K orange-red.
Nice 2-cm round rosettes on a rock in a dry wash, collected a portion with permit for UCD. Keys to Acarospora rosulata, as best I can tell - perhaps a more classic appearance (rosette-like?) than my previous specimen?
Growing on shrub twigs in a narrow sandy wash, collected a portion with permit for UCD. Most of the twigs were covered in Candelaria concolor, this crust with 0.5 mm black apothecia and circa 16 x 6 micron gray-brown spores with one septa was a minor component of the specimen.
growing spontaneously in the upper, wild part of the garden
I found this placodioid brown crust on a boulder in a grassy field and collected a portion with permit for UCD. It has numerous tiny spores per ascus, the hymenium height is roughly 100-130 microns, and the thallus is K negative, P negative and C plus pink (faint transient flush of pink under compound scope).
I found this somewhat warty pale crust growing on the north face of a slick black, HCL-negative rock (basalt?) in a riparian area. The thallus has 1-1.5 mm areoles that appear to be pruinose and sunken blackish apothecia. There seem to be two populations of ascomata - one with globose hyaline 20-micron spores and one with sickle-shaped one-septate spores measuring about 24 x 7 microns, both 4-8/ascus. The epihymenium is blue-green for some of the apos. I collected a portion with permit for UCD.
This observation is for the parasitic fungus growing on the Aspicilia/Circinaria lichen - thanks to Valerii Darmostuk from the Lichenicolous Fungi 2.0 Facebook site for the genus ID. The host lichen is posted here:
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/202310026