Good golly! I would have never guessed the orange stuff on
cypress trees and rocks is a type of green algae. When I first saw it years ago in this limited area of Point Lobos, I figured it was a
mold of some sort. Thanks to the handy-dandy checklist the ranger gave us (I mentioned this in
my osprey post from this hike), I now have a name to the genus. When I first searched online, I misspelled
Trentepohlia as "
Trentepholia" with the 'o' and 'h' switched. I got lots of beautiful pictures, but very little actual information about this living thing. Sigh, gone are the days when my only labels were insects, flowers, and places. I still feel like I should take another general biology class to figure out what all those non-plant/non-animals things are.
ps 06/09/12 - I edited the name and links above to reflect better book and online information about the specific
Trentepohlia found at Point Lobos.