6-cm placodioid orange lichen with narrow 1-2 mm peripheral lobes. Collected a portion with permit and with on-site supervision by monument biologist.
Heat-treated spores are 12-13.5 microns long and with a circa 4-micron septum. K plus bright red-purple, as expected. No lower cortex on cross-sections through lobe tips.
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).
Patchy lichen in the middle
@skullroy ?
This lichen was growing abundantly on the north side of a HCL-negative boulder in a sandy wash. I collected a portion with a permit for UCD. Spores are simple, hyaline, 4-8 per ascus and about 12 microns in greatest dimension. The lichen came off the rock pretty easily (although in fragments) without a chisel.
This yellow-green areolate crust was growing abundantly on sandy soil. I collected some thalli with a permit. As best I can tell, the specimens are sterile with numerous pycnidia, perhaps a lichenicolous fungus on an Acarospora?
Cyanolichen growing with moss on sandy soil, collected together with moss with permit. There are rare small brownish apothecia that appear to lack spores.
Areolate cream-to-buff colored crustose lichen on sandstone (?) that reacted strongly with HCl, collected a portion with permit.
Areoles about 1 mm, apothecia about 0.5 mm in diameter. Spores 8/ascus, brown, four-celled with transverse septae but not muriform in the ones I can see well. Spore length varied considerably, from about 20-32 microns. The spores are notably distorted when seen within an intact ascus. The thallus was K and P negative, both under the scope in thin sections and as applied to the areoles under a dissecting scope.