''Cladonia parasitica'', commonly known as the fence-rail cladonia, fence-rail cup lichen or parasite club lichen, is a species of

fruticose A fruticose lichen is a form of lichen fungi that is characterized by a coral-like shrubby or bushy growth structure. It is formed from a symbiotic relationship of a photobiont such as green algae or less commonly cyanobacteria and one, two or ...

, cup lichen in the family

Cladoniaceae The Cladoniaceae are a family of lichenized fungi in the order Lecanorales. It is one of the largest families of lichen-forming fungi, with about 560 species distributed amongst 17 genera. The reindeer moss and cup lichens ('' Cladonia'') belong ...

. It was first described by

Hoffmann Hoffmann is a German language, German surname. People A *Albert Hoffmann (horticulturist), Albert Hoffmann (1846–1924), German horticulturist *Alexander Hoffmann (politician), Alexander Hoffmann (born 1975), German politician *Arthur Hoffmann ...

in 1784 under the name ''Lichen parasiticus'', until he reclassified it under the genus

Cladonia ''Cladonia'' is a genus of moss-like lichens in the family Cladoniaceae. They are the primary food source for reindeer/caribou. ''Cladonia'' species are of economic importance to reindeer-herders, such as the Sami in Scandinavia or the Nenets ...

in 1795.

Description

''Cladonia parasitica'' mainly grows on old oak and pine wood. The

thallus Thallus (plural: thalli), from Latinized Greek (), meaning "a green shoot" or "twig", is the vegetative tissue of some organisms in diverse groups such as algae, fungi, some liverworts, lichens, and the Myxogastria. Many of these organisms ...

is brown or grey. The squamules are minutely divided and look like coral or small scales. When

apothecia An ascocarp, or ascoma (), is the fruiting body ( sporocarp) of an ascomycete phylum fungus. It consists of very tightly interwoven hyphae and millions of embedded asci, each of which typically contains four to eight ascospores. Ascocarps are mos ...

are present they take the form of small brown morel-like protrusions atop the branches. The species is found in North America and Eurasia in the boreal, boreal-nemoral, and nemoral regions. Cladonia parasitica is considered a red-listed species in Sweden, categorized as (''

Near Threatened A near-threatened species is a species which has been categorized as "Near Threatened" (NT) by the International Union for Conservation of Nature as that may be vulnerable to endangerment in the near future, but it does not currently qualify f ...

''). It is used as a signal species, indicating high-value old-growth forest. Källén, 2015. https://stud.epsilon.slu.se/7931/7/kallen_i_150521.pdf Environmental variables determining the occurrence of Cladonia parasitica and Hertelidea botryosa, two boreal lichens confined to wood. Its secondary metabolites include barbatic acid, decarboxythamnolic acid and thamnolic acid.

References

* , ''Deutschl. Fl.'', Zweiter Theil (Erlangen): 127 (1796) * 1796 1795' ''Deutschlands Flora oder Botanisches Taschenbuch. Zweiter Theil für das Jahr 1795. Cryptogamie.'': 1–200
Mattick Rec.# 23603 – Recent Literature on Lichens

parasitica Parasitica (the parasitican wasps) is an obsolete, paraphyletic infraorder of Apocrita containing the parasitoid wasps. It includes all Apocrita except for the Aculeata. Parasitica has more members as a group than both the Symphyta and the Acule ...

Lichen species Lichens described in 1784 {{Lecanorales-stub

Description

See also

References

External links