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A Field Guide to California Lichens
The definitive guide to California’s diverse array of lichen flora, with color photographs and descriptions of over 500 species
Lichens are among the most colorful and abundant organisms in the world. They provide food and nesting material for a wide variety of wildlife, contribute nutrients to the soil, and are indicators of both undisturbed ecosystems and clean air. They lend color and pattern to trees, shrubs, and rocks, yet most people know little about them. This richly illustrated, authoritative guide to the lichens of California draws new attention to these striking and ecologically important organisms, which are symbionts—representing a relationship between a fungus and alga—and highlights their beauty, diversity, and value as a natural resource.
Lichens are especially abundant and varied in California, where climates range from temperate rainforests to arid deserts. A Field Guide to California Lichens features stunning new photographs of some 500 lichen species by award-winning nature photographer Stephen Sharnoff. Up-to-date descriptions accompany each illustration. Among the special contributions of the guide are its coverage of most common macrolichens in California and its inclusion of many of the crust-forming species. For land management professionals and scientists involved with ecosystem studies, for birders, hikers, and all others curious about the natural world around them, this book will be a welcome field companion.
Lichens are among the most colorful and abundant organisms in the world. They provide food and nesting material for a wide variety of wildlife, contribute nutrients to the soil, and are indicators of both undisturbed ecosystems and clean air. They lend color and pattern to trees, shrubs, and rocks, yet most people know little about them. This richly illustrated, authoritative guide to the lichens of California draws new attention to these striking and ecologically important organisms, which are symbionts—representing a relationship between a fungus and alga—and highlights their beauty, diversity, and value as a natural resource.
Lichens are especially abundant and varied in California, where climates range from temperate rainforests to arid deserts. A Field Guide to California Lichens features stunning new photographs of some 500 lichen species by award-winning nature photographer Stephen Sharnoff. Up-to-date descriptions accompany each illustration. Among the special contributions of the guide are its coverage of most common macrolichens in California and its inclusion of many of the crust-forming species. For land management professionals and scientists involved with ecosystem studies, for birders, hikers, and all others curious about the natural world around them, this book will be a welcome field companion.
424 pages, Paperback
First published May 27, 2014
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January 3, 2021
Every winter, after my fieldwork season ends, I take on one (and only one) self-improvement project: to start identifying a new group of organisms. My backlist is vast (birds, seaweeds, fossil plants, insects), but something always rises to the top. Previous years have taken me on deep dives into the world of grasses, mosses, ammonites, and eucalypts. 2021 is my year of lichen.
This field guide by Sharnoff is the only readily available book on lichens in California. It's a lovely one with full color photos throughout. It is also decidedly not beginner friendly. The vocabulary becomes daunting almost immediately. There are no dichotomous keys. The species are not sorted by location - and California's got everything from temperate rainforests to chaparral to deserts. Instead, lichens are grouped by shape (foliose - leafy, fruticose - branchy, and crustose & squamulose - uh, crusty?), and arranged alphabetically by scientific name within each section. If you can't guess the genus, you have to flip through the photos of a whole section. And if you're not that great at distinguishing between a flattish foliose lichen and a frilly squamulose one, you'll have to look through both sections.*
*Or you could join the digital revolution and adopt a hybrid ID method. I use the iNaturalist app to snap a photo of the lichen to get genus suggestions, then look those up in the book to confirm or narrow down. Much faster. It turns out that some of the most common lichens in my area are pretty easy to ID - oak moss lichen (Evernia prunastri) and the delightfully named golden moonglow lichen (Dimelaena oreina). The California state lichen Ramalina menziesii is an absolute stunner, and for a long time it was the only lichen I knew by name.
There are some useful field ID tips tucked away in the genus and species accounts. For example, the fruticose genus Alectoria can be distinguished from the similar-looking Usnea by stretching a branch: if it breaks cleanly, you have Alectoria; if it has some stretch to the core, it's Usnea. But a lot of the species-level IDs require chemical reagents, which is kind of weird and unhelpful for a field guide, since I don't go hiking with a bottle of K+ in my pocket.
The vocabulary for lichens is a bit intimidating, too. Mycologists will do better with it than botanists because lichens are not plants - they are composite organisms with fungal and algal symbionts. There's a glossary in the back, but even the introduction doesn't pull any punches:
Whew. If there were a Lichens for Dummies, I'd probably be reaching for that instead. But I've learned some interesting things already from this one (did you know that lichens have never been successfully cultivated?) and will continue to muddle through. I'm already looking forward to my next walk through lichen-filled winter woods.
This field guide by Sharnoff is the only readily available book on lichens in California. It's a lovely one with full color photos throughout. It is also decidedly not beginner friendly. The vocabulary becomes daunting almost immediately. There are no dichotomous keys. The species are not sorted by location - and California's got everything from temperate rainforests to chaparral to deserts. Instead, lichens are grouped by shape (foliose - leafy, fruticose - branchy, and crustose & squamulose - uh, crusty?), and arranged alphabetically by scientific name within each section. If you can't guess the genus, you have to flip through the photos of a whole section. And if you're not that great at distinguishing between a flattish foliose lichen and a frilly squamulose one, you'll have to look through both sections.*
*Or you could join the digital revolution and adopt a hybrid ID method. I use the iNaturalist app to snap a photo of the lichen to get genus suggestions, then look those up in the book to confirm or narrow down. Much faster. It turns out that some of the most common lichens in my area are pretty easy to ID - oak moss lichen (Evernia prunastri) and the delightfully named golden moonglow lichen (Dimelaena oreina). The California state lichen Ramalina menziesii is an absolute stunner, and for a long time it was the only lichen I knew by name.
There are some useful field ID tips tucked away in the genus and species accounts. For example, the fruticose genus Alectoria can be distinguished from the similar-looking Usnea by stretching a branch: if it breaks cleanly, you have Alectoria; if it has some stretch to the core, it's Usnea. But a lot of the species-level IDs require chemical reagents, which is kind of weird and unhelpful for a field guide, since I don't go hiking with a bottle of K+ in my pocket.
The vocabulary for lichens is a bit intimidating, too. Mycologists will do better with it than botanists because lichens are not plants - they are composite organisms with fungal and algal symbionts. There's a glossary in the back, but even the introduction doesn't pull any punches:
Crustose lichens, as the name suggests, form crustlike patches on the substrate. Some species have tiny lobes around the edges that can be somewhat ascending, and some are mostly adnate (flat), but they lack a lower cortex, so the tissues of the medulla are tightly bound to the substrate. The thallus can be thick or thin, continuous, cracked (rimose), divided into irregular sections (areolate), or consist of granules or rough warts (verrucose, or verruculose when the warts are minute).
Whew. If there were a Lichens for Dummies, I'd probably be reaching for that instead. But I've learned some interesting things already from this one (did you know that lichens have never been successfully cultivated?) and will continue to muddle through. I'm already looking forward to my next walk through lichen-filled winter woods.
Displaying 1 of 1 review