Each month Trail Manager, Emily Galka, highlights flora and fauna that she observes in the Goethe State Forest that surrounds the Black Prong Resort. Goethe State Forest Species of the Month: Christmas Lichen (Cryptothecia Rubrocincta)

Each month Trail Manager, Emily Galka, highlights flora and fauna that she observes in the Goethe State Forest that surrounds the Black Prong Resort.

Back in October, trail guide Morgan and I attended a BioBlitz event at the Goethe Giant, where volunteers worked together to catalog as many species of plants, animals, fungi, and anything else we encountered as part of a citizen science project. Our friend Hailee, a Goethe biologist and host of the event, pointed out a tree covered in Christmas lichen, and I immediately knew it had to be our December species of the month.

If you’ve spent any time in the Goethe, you’ve almost certainly noticed Christmas lichen on tree trunks—pale to bright pink and pale green circular patches. While many types of lichens exist, Christmas lichen is a crustose variety, meaning it grows in flat, scaly layers.

Lichens are fascinating because they aren’t a single organism but a symbiotic partnership between a fungus (the mycobiont) and a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont, in this case an alga). A Florida native, Christmas lichen ranges as far north as North Carolina and is also found throughout the southeastern United States and Central America. Because it absorbs nutrients from the air, its presence indicates good air quality; high levels of sulfur or heavy metals can kill it, yet scientists are still unsure on how it reproduces.

Lichen has long been harvested and boiled to create dyes—this species produces a pinkish-red. Common as it may be, the bright splash of color it adds to tree bark makes it a perfectly festive highlight for our December species of the month.