Yet another hour of lichenological fun, despite some initial technical difficulties. Here are all the observations we discussed:

http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/560665
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/271655
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/517302
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/609817
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/602837
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/619187
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/476969
http://www.inaturalist.org/observations/477349

We also talked about how to prep a spore slide, taxonomic issues surrounding Usnea / Dolichousnea longissima, and the fact that CALS has been working with the California Native Plant Society to include lichens in their rare plant inventory. Go CALS!

Anyway, keep the observations coming! Hopefully we'll be able to schedule another get-together sooner than 6 months from now!

Yup, it's a been a long, long time, but we're getting the band back together Tuesday at 7:00pm PDT. As is our wont, we shall try to ID some contributions to this project. Live. On the Internet. If you want to tune in live, check this spot or our Google Plus page: https://plus.google.com/116809484445638569478

Here's the recording of our August 2013 session. We actually got everyone connected this time!

Tomorrow CALS members are going to get together online to look over some of your contributions to this project. We're going to try and use Google Hangouts agin, so check out the Society's Google Plus page tomorrow (Aug 13) at 7:30pm PDT. Last time we had at least a few folks watching live.

So despite some technical issues, we did get together tonight to talk about your lichen observations! You can check out the video here:

Many thanks to everyone who has contributed to the project! Sorry we couldn't get to everything, but we hope you guys find these discussions informative even if we didn't get to your photo.

Tomorrow night members of the California Lichen Society are going to get together online to look over some of your contributions to this project and we're going to try and broadcast it live via Google Hangouts. Crazy, right? So crazy it might not work, but we'll see how it goes. At the very least we'll check out some of your stuff and add some IDs, so if you want to tune in and maybe learn something about lichens, checkout the Society's Google Plus page tomorrow (May 28) at 7:30pm PDT. Maybe we can even take questions via Google Plus or Twitter (@CALichenS)!

I wanted to let you all know that the name and ownership of this project has changed: it's now Ask a Lichenologist (it was California Lichens) and it'll be run by the California Lichen Society, aka CALS (I'm a member, even though I'm still learning about lichens). I originally started this project with the hopes of getting CALS involved, so I'm happy to see them embracing this platform.

Ask a Lichenologist will focus on helping people out with lichen identifications, so if you have a mystery lichen that you'd like to learn more about, please add it to the project! CALS members will periodically get together to identify as many contributions as they can. We may also try to use this project as a venue for announcing lichen-related events. We're still testing the waters!

Looking forward to all of your contributions. Remember that lichens are tough to ID from photos, so be sure to take lots of pics from multiple angles. The closer the beter!