The acetone vaporized today, and I busied myself with hydrating the
P. chloantha sample via mist bottle. It turned an unusually dark shade of green (compare to my earlier samples, which were much paler in greenness after wetting; perhaps the acetone dissolved some unknown secondary metabolites (no such metabolites have ever been detected in
chloantha)? A while later, I saw a whitish round microarthropod strolling about on the sample surface. How did it survive 30+ minutes of immersion in pure acetone the other day? In addition to its usefulness as a lichen metabolite dissolver, acetone is used in entomological killing jars! Furthermore, the
Eucalyptus bark the lichens were attached to smelled faintly moldy as soon as they became damp, quite alarmingly. I had only collected them days ago, and kept them dry all that time!
I have pulled out some lichen thalli and am attempting to keep them on plastic to isolate them from the mold and arthropods, but several turned brown within hours (death via mechanical injury?).
Here are microscope pics of some bonus green algae (and possibly some barely visible lichen threadlets) I pulled off a parking lot tree. The lichenologist thought the former were
Lepraria/Leprocaulon lichens until seeing algal cells swim around during hydration.
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