Click any of these small photos for the large original. See the medium size version.

Cladonia perforata

Deeper alternative: Slideshow and Gallery in Adobe Flash.

Hi, call me Perf. I'm one of a rare endangered species of reindeer lichen, Cladonia perforata Evans. A part of me can clone and grow into a larger plant. This is how we reproduce. I can move with foot traffic or blow in the wind. This is how we spread. Being a lichen, I'm not rooted and rest lightly on the ground.

I live here in open sun on dry, well-drained white sand in a xeric environment called Rosemary Scrub.

I'm a fragment of a larger plant. Like this

When undisturbed, we grow together in ever larger and denser mats.

We often mix with other Cladonia species common to the scrub, such as Cladonia subtenuis (Dixie lichen) or Cladonia leporina (Jester lichen). In this photo, perforata is the larger yellowish smooth skinned fragment to the mid-right. In the photo to the right, perforata is above. Click link to compare Cladonia perforata on the left with Cladonia subtenuis on the right in this big 1MB larger than life photo.

Seven years after starting to follow deer lichen in 2007, I was escorted by Natural Resource personnel in to the Closed Access area of Eglin Air Force Base to view the Cladonia perforata.

Here are a few links to external pages on the topic. After publishing this page I made an important contact on the Jackson Guard (not official) Facebook page. I posted a link to my page and got back information from Timothy Mahar with his research: http://www.academia.edu/494861/Potential_Historic_Distribution_of_Cladonia_Perforata_in_Escambia_County_Florida_-_to_include_Santa_Rosa_Okaloosa_and_Walton_Counties. Back to deer lichen.

{Back to top of page}

To send comments, click the three dots ( ... link) below:
lich...@wholeo.net

{Wholeo Online} ~ {Lookout} ~ {deer lichen} ~ {Lookout 2014}