Leprarians for St. Patrick’s Day!

This post was brought to you by the color green!

St. Patrick’s Day is well-timed, as we celebrate the color green on this very late winter day. On the calendar, it’s so very close to official spring, but on the ground, we’re still not fully convinced. So we look for and relish each glimpse of green: each resurgent patch of moss . . .

Each tuft of wild onion leaves waving around above the dry brown leaf litter . . .

Each green stink bug wandering around, warmed into activity by a persistent ray of sunshine.

This year, my favorite glimpse of green is a relatively new acquaintance: lichens in genus Lepraria, commonly called dust lichens. The leprarians I find myself spotting the most live in little sheltered nooks and crannies in cliff rocks, big boulders, or at the bases of trees. They tend to look like a minty green patch of dust, or cornmeal, clinging to the surface.

The dusty-looking granules are actually soredia—tiny ball-like packets of fungus and algae that readily break away to start new lichens elsewhere. (Remember that lichens are basically fungi that have algae living in their tissues—“fungi that have discovered agriculture.”) Missouri has something like six species of Lepraria lichens.

I like calling them leprarians, because it sounds something like “leprechauns.” And to me, they’re kind of like those small magical beings. They live in shaded, damp nooks in the woods, but they don’t live in every likely nook. There’s apparently no rhyme or reason to their occurrence. If you look for them, you’ll find one, eventually. But they’re not abundant around here, for sure. So when you see one, you go “Oho! There you are! I see you!”

Bonus fun: later in the year, once the insect world is back in full swing, you might see a small wad of lichen, less than about a quarter of an inch in diameter, wiggling and staggering around, trying to walk. It turns out there are lacewing larvae that decorate their backs with the soredia particles of lichens, and Lepraria species are one of their favorites for this purpose. It serves as camouflage for the larvae, which hunt and eat aphids. I don’t have a picture to show you, because the last time I saw one of these, I didn’t have my camera with me! But there are a number of fun videos online (such as this one) to see these curious little insects in motion.