I spent a day in Central Frontenac around the Salmon River exploring with a friend, Chris. This area has a fair amount of crown land and my family is lucky enough to own a property in the area. We started our search with looking for a rare lichen, Pale-bellied Frost Lichen (
Physconia subpallida). This species is Endangered in Ontario with the only know records being in Frontenac, Haliburton, Hastings, Peterborough, Lanark and Renfrew counties. It grows on the bark of trees such as Hop Hornbeam, White ash, Black walnut, and American elm. The top and bottom surface of this species are light coloured.
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| Chris closely inspecting the lichens on a tree with a hand lens. |
Unfortunately the rare species we were hoping to find looks very similar to other species and we couldn't really tell for certain in the field if we had found it or not without taking pieces off the tree and looking at the underside to determine if it was light coloured. Most of the simialr looking species have a darker underside. We did see a lot of the similar looking species so I expect there could have been a little patch of the one we were looking for somewhere on these old lichen covered trees.
On the rocky granite outcroppings we were walking on Narrowleaf Cow Wheat (
Melampyrum lineare) was growing out of cracks in the rock with some of the Reindeer Lichens (
Cladina sp.).
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| Narrowleaf Cow Wheat (Melampyrum lineare) |
This was really a day of fungi and ferns! We visited some upland rock barren area, lower floodplain areas near the water, mixed forest and wet Silver Maple Swamp allowing us to see a wide diversity of species all in one day. The rocky areas were more diverse for lichens including some that were actually easily recognizable! Well at least to Chris who is much more knowledgeable on lichen ID than myself.
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| Many-fruited Pelt Lichen (Peltigera polydactylon) |
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| Many-fruited Pelt Lichen (Peltigera polydactylon) with some Cladonia growing out of it. |
Plitt's Rock Shield
(Xanthoparmelia plittii) is light green on the surface and a light brown underneath. It had a very flat appearance to the thallus and the fruiting bodies that we saw weren't very striking or large.
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| Plitt's Rock Shield
(Xanthoparmelia plittii) |
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| Plitt's Rock Shield
(Xanthoparmelia plittii) |
Shingled Rock-shield Lichen (Xanthoparmelia viriduloumbrina) is greyish green and the overlapping thallus layers give it a bit more interesting form so it doesn't just look flat. It also had a lot of small branching on the edges of the older central thallus areas that can shoot upwards.
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| Shingled Rock-shield Lichen (Xanthoparmelia viriduloumbrina) |
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| Shingled Rock-shield Lichen (Xanthoparmelia viriduloumbrina) |
Cumberland Rock Shield
(Xanthoparmelia cumberlandia) has a small flat thallus but very prominent fruiting bodies that have dark brown centers.
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| Cumberland Rock Shield
(Xanthoparmelia cumberlandia) |
Peppered Rock-Shield (Xanthoparmelia conspersa) gets it's name from the appearance of it's fruiting bodies that give is a dusted appearance.
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| Peppered Rock-Shield (Xanthoparmelia conspersa) |
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| Peppered Rock-Shield (Xanthoparmelia conspersa) |
Common Greenshield Lichen
(Flavoparmelia caperata) grows on live or dead tree bark in open sunny areas and looks similar to Xanthoparmelia with its light green thallus.
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| Common Greenshield Lichen
(Flavoparmelia caperata) |
This
Stereocaulon sp. found growing on the granite rock barren wasn't identifiable to species in the field but the grey dusty appearance make it recognizable to genus.
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| Stereocaulon sp. |
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| Stereocaulon sp. |
The more shaded areas adjacent to the rocky outcrops had Rock Polypody Ferns (
Polypodium virginianum)
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| Rock Polypody Ferns (Polypodium virginianum) |
The sori were always a fascinating thing about ferns to me and I used to love having my students watch them disperse spores under a microscope when I was a teaching assistant in University. If you look at these under a microscope the sorus contains multiple tiny sporangium. Some ferns have a indusium covering the sorus and the presence and shape of this can help with species ID. Rock Polypody doesn't have any indusium and the sporangium are just in a big round clump on the underside of the leaf.
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| Rock Polypody Ferns (Polypodium virginianum) |
As the sporangium mature and warm up they will pop open with the release
of the annulus (basically like a cover around the sporangium) that acts
almost spring loaded and flicks open and disperses the spores
everywhere.
I don't have any videos of this but there are some posted on you tube.
Common Bracken
(Pteridium aquilinum) is a medium sized fern recognized by its form and highly divided leaves. The genus
Pteridium is found on all continents except Antarctica and has the genus has the widest distribution of any fern genera in the world. Common Bracken occurs in both temperate and subtropical regions and the fact the spores are light enough to get carried on global air currents may contribute to it's wide ranging distribution.
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| Common Bracken
(Pteridium aquilinum) |
The leaves reach about 1-3 ft tall and if you're crashing through dense bracken understory it has a distinctive smell.
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| Common Bracken
(Pteridium aquilinum) |
Smokey-eyed Boulder Lichen
(Porpidia albocaerulescens) is a crustose lichen that is recognized by
grayish blue fruiting bodies (apothecia).
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| Smokey-eyed Boulder Lichen
(Porpidia albocaerulescens) |
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| Smokey-eyed Boulder Lichen
(Porpidia albocaerulescens) |
Freckled Pelt Lichen
(Peltigera aphthosa) is dull gray-green when dry and bright green when wet. When it is wet the 'warts' on the top of the thallus stand out even more against the bright green.
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| Freckled Pelt Lichen
(Peltigera aphthosa) |
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| Freckled Pelt Lichen
(Peltigera aphthosa) |
Sometimes you just need to stare at rocky cliff faces and admire the sheer diversity of random things growing on it.
Maidenhair Spleenwort
(Asplenium trichomanes) is a small delicate looking fern that grows in tuffs from the short rhizome. They range from 8 - 40 cm long. This species also widespread globally and occurs in temprate areas or more alpine areas in tropical regions.
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| Maidenhair Spleenwort
(Asplenium trichomanes) |
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| Maidenhair Spleenwort
(Asplenium trichomanes) |
Walking Fern (
Asplenium rhizophyllum) grows clonaly from where the arching leaves touch the ground making it look like they are walking. This is one of my favourite ferns in Ontario. It grows on rocky outcrops, erratics and cliff faces.
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| Walking Fern (Asplenium rhizophyllum) |
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| Walking Fern (Asplenium rhizophyllum) |
Walking ferns also reproduce with sori. The sori are found under the leaves and have an irregular shape to them.
Sori numerous, scattered somewhat irregularly over blade, often joined at vein junctures.They mostly appear linear or like a >.
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| Walking Fern (Asplenium rhizophyllum) |
Brittle Bladderfern
(Cystopteris fragilis) is a common species that grows in shady moist areas. This species only has dark colouration on the petiole at the base. Sorry I didn't think to capture a photo of that trait in particular.
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| Brittle Bladderfern
(Cystopteris fragilis) |
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| Brittle Bladderfern
(Cystopteris fragilis) |
Marginal Wood Fern
(Dryopteris marginalis) is another common fern species in Ontario. There are a few species that look similar in the genus but the location of the sori is diagnostic.
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| Marginal Wood Fern
(Dryopteris marginalis) |
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| Marginal Wood Fern
(Dryopteris marginalis) |
Mackay's Fragile Fern
(Cystopteris tenuis) grows in shaded or partially shaded areas of cliffs, talus slopes, ravines, rock outcrops, swamps, wooded banks or wooded slopes. It looks very similar to Brittle Fragile Fern (Cystopteris fragilis) but the dark colour of the petiole that goes up to the leaf blade is diagnostic.
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| Mackay's Fragile Fern
(Cystopteris tenuis) |
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| Mackay's Fragile Fern
(Cystopteris tenuis) |
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| Mackay's Fragile Fern
(Cystopteris tenuis) |
Large-leaved Aster (
Eurybia macrophylla) is an Aster with learge heart shaped leaves.
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| Large-leaved Aster (Eurybia macrophylla) |
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| Large-leaved Aster (Eurybia macrophylla) |
We saw a lot of cute mushrooms while walking around in the mixed forest and wetter areas.We saw a bunch of gilled mushrooms in the order Agaricaules.
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| order Agaricaules |
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| Brittlegill (Genus Russula) |
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| Brittlegill (Genus Russula) |
Lobster Mushroom
(Hypomyces lactifluorum) are irregular looking and have bright orange fruiting bodies.
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| Lobster Mushroom
(Hypomyces lactifluorum) |
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| Lobster Mushroom
(Hypomyces lactifluorum) |
Bracket Fungi live on the bark of live or dead wood. They have a downward half cone form with a flat bottom.
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| Bracket Fungi |
Northern Red Belt
(Fomitopsis mounceae) is a large redish orange fungi that grows on wood.
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| Northern Red Belt
(Fomitopsis mounceae) |
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| Northern Red Belt
(Fomitopsis mounceae) |
I am pretty sute this layered fungi growin on bark is Mossy Maze Polypore
(Cerrena unicolor) but I am not certain. It was a very nice lush colour of green and with the overlaping layers of fruiting bodies it did form sort of a maze.
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| Mossy Maze Polypore
(Cerrena unicolor) |
Red Raspberry Slime Mold
(Tubifera ferruginosa) is a type of slime mould, which isn't a true fungi but still forms spore-bearing structures. THis one was growing on a mossy rotting tree that had falled a long time ago.
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| Red Raspberry Slime Mold
(Tubifera ferruginosa) |
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| Red Raspberry Slime Mold
(Tubifera ferruginosa) |
Royal Fern
(Osmunda regalis) was the largest fern species we saw that day. It was growing above my waist. The sporangium of this species are found on a seprate stem rather than on the bottom of the blades.
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| Royal Fern
(Osmunda regalis) |
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| Royal Fern
(Osmunda regalis) |
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| Royal Fern
(Osmunda regalis) |
