Kilminning - NO6308

This may be a one off. I'm afraid I often start these things and never continue, but I have had the notion to write a blog about our FLAG adventures (that's Fife Lichen Appreciation Group to the uninitiated). Let's see how long it lasts. There may only ever be one entry - although it needn't only be up to me of course! I have to add I am not very scientific and this is not meant to be 100 % accurate in any shape or form, more a fun but hopefully interesting and informative account of our days out. Here is Post No. 1.

It may have been the change of date, a change of interests (recorders of a different sort) or simply a change of mind, but our group was reduced to just 4 members today. No matter, it meant there was a piece of birthday cake for everyone (thanks Alan) and only eight feet to worry about, not 20 or more as we negotiated the holy sandstone surface of this beautiful stretch of Fie's coastline.

NO6308 to be precise.

Once we hit the rocks (not literally, thankfully) we did not have to move far for the whole day as there was an artist's pallet of lichens to explore, with a few familiar species to get us warmed up. Ochrolechia parella was abundant and anaptychia runcinata was glad of a drink to show its true green colour. Slicing apothecia revealed tephromela atra and, amongst the yellow/orange candidates we had Xanthoria parietina and Variospora thallincola - one of my favourites. Nearer the sea, this species' centre had been obliterated, leaving only its luscious long orange lobes as a sort of 'bonnet'.

Despite the sun, it soon got very blustery and cold and we found shelter to have our late morning coffee. Alasdair challenged me to a porpidia, which I convinced everyone was P.platycarpoides, due to its K+ yellow reaction and pruinose apothecia. Having recently returned from Eday, Orkney, where I recorded this species a lot, I was feeling quite confident about this until some doubt was mooted, especially about its ?pruinose appearance. Hopefully someone has a photo. This was quite an abundant species on the rocks here.

Our Fifeness session last year with Brian had given us some confidence about Lecidella meiococca, a species which can be found on wood or stone and is very difficult to tell apart from L. asema so we didn't differentiate (but later saw that L.meiococca has been recorded here in the past, so perhaps this is more likely). Both species are K+y and C+ orange. Our C test was very weak, making L. meiococca even more likely apparently).

Looking for the black pycnidia and blackened base of Ramalina cuspidata, we were able to pick out both R. siliquosa and R.cuspidata on the rocks. A convincing K+ red test on aspicilia, with immersed apothecia and grey prothallus keyed us out to Aspicilia cinerea, which appears to be a life tick for me. Could this be right? I will add photos in case anyone wants to throw doubt on our ID!

Moving around the area was far from easy with lots of eroded holes just waiting for you to twist your ankle in, not to mention jagged and often slippy rocks, but, hardy lichenologists in the making that we are, we were undaunted by such potential adversity and battled on, braving the elements - helped of course by Alan's birthday cake and also by, wait for it - 2 exciting species of the day . . . .

Well, maybe 3, but we're even less certain what one of them is than the other 2. It's definitely caloplaca (as was) K+red, but we were unable to get any further with it really, apothecia - what apothecia? orangey/yellow or yellowy/orange thallus, powdery or aerolate and such questions which did not seem to fit with our specimen. We ended up with Caloplaca ochrocea, but were not happy with that due to its unlikely distribution on east coast. Again, any help would be appreciated.

So now to my favourite 2 of the day. I had a feeling I remembered Brian saying he was looking for Anaptychia mamillata at Fifeness last year as he had seen it at Kilminning some years before (I may be wrong about this!) We had also seen this rare species at Earlsferry so were very slightly familiar with it - and there it was, shouting out to us with all its dark colour and fluttering its cilia eyelashes at us. I had the feeling it had not been appreciated for a few years and we made up for it, fawning over it and reading through both Dobson and Becky Yahr's new book to make sure our ID was correct. So no-one is allowed to dispute it! Unless of course, we're wrong.

Feeling very pleased with ourselves and venturing closer to the sea, we left Norman to his own devices higher up the shore. He announced modestly that he'd seen two species on a rock that he wasn't sure about and patiently waited for us to come back to have a look at lunch time.

One of the species we knew straight away to be Lichina confinis, a stumpy little black thing confined to coastal areas and further up the shore than its larger relative Lichina pygmae, which we didn't see today. That was the easy one.

Next up was the green squamulose and very isidiate bluey-green specimen that covered a whole surface of the rock he had picked up. This stumped us all, so we all worked on it using the generic key in Dobson for squamulose lichens and ruling out most genus on account of wrong substrate and lack of apothecia.

This really only left us with Parmeliella triptophylla, which I had in the margin of Dobson as having seen at Drumnadrochit in Oct 2024 but couldn't remember. Perhaps it's just Xanthoparmelia conspersa, but we didn't think so. I thought I had taken a photo but didn't, so hope someone else has one they can send so I can add it to the post.

We had a superb day, were joined by a shiny green beetle which may have been responsible for some of the grazed lichen, but otherwise more or less had the place to ourselves. Our full list will be available soon. I'm writing this now as I'll forget otherwise.

Looking forward to our next lichen adventure on 17th May at Tentsmuir.