Sunday photoblogging - wolf lichen in the Sierra

we got going early this morning while it was still almost chilly and before the usual wind started up... the humboldt-toiyabe national forest* boundary is only a few miles from the house, just inside the california border...

(* 6.3 million acres makes it the largest forest in the lower 48 states)

the eastern sierra foothills are mostly ponderosa pine with an occasional aspen grove thrown in here and there... it's the start of the rain shadow and the forest is customarily crackling dry and even more so now because of a serious lack of precipitation over the winter and extending through this spring...

we explored a crystal-quartz quarry and then wandered a bit through the woods, our feet barely touching the dirt through a thick carpet of pine needles... the thick lichen on many of the tree branches caught my eye...





i went web surfing to see if i could identify it and this is as close as i came... whaddaya think...? is it a match...?

Letharia vulpina ("wolf lichen") on incense cedar bark, western slope of the Sierra Nevada, California.

This was the most widely used dye lichen for indigenous peoples in western North America, used from the Rockies to the Pacific coast, from California to Alaska. Some groups also made paint from it.

This lichen is sufficiently poisonous that the Achomawi in Northern California used it to make poison arrowheads, but the Okanagan-Colville made a weak tea of it to treat internal problems, and it was a Blackfoot remedy for stomach disorders.

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