Checklist of the Lichens and Allied Fungi of Kathy Stiles Freeland Bibb County Glades Preserve, Alabama, U.S.A

Opuscula Philolichenum, 18: 420–434. 2019. *pdf effectively published online 2December2019 via (http://sweetgum.nybg.org/philolichenum/) Checklist of the lichens and allied fungi of Kathy Stiles Freeland Bibb County Glades Preserve, Alabama, U.S.A. J. KEVIN ENGLAND1, CURTIS J. HANSEN2, JESSICA L. ALLEN3, SEAN Q. BEECHING4, WILLIAM R. BUCK5, VITALY CHARNY6, JOHN G. GUCCION7, RICHARD C. HARRIS8, MALCOLM HODGES9, NATALIE M. HOWE10, JAMES C. LENDEMER11, R. TROY MCMULLIN12, ERIN A. TRIPP13, DENNIS P. WATERS14 ABSTRACT. – The first checklist of lichenized, lichenicolous and lichen-allied fungi from the Kathy Stiles Freeland Bibb County Glades Preserve in Bibb County, Alabama, is presented. Collections made during the 2017 Tuckerman Workshop and additional records from herbaria and online sources are included. Two hundred and thirty-eight taxa in 115 genera are enumerated. Thirty taxa of lichenized, lichenicolous and lichen-allied fungi are newly reported for Alabama: Acarospora fuscata, A. novomexicana, Circinaria contorta, Constrictolumina cinchonae, Dermatocarpon dolomiticum, Didymocyrtis cladoniicola, Graphis anfractuosa, G. rimulosa, Hertelidea pseudobotryosa, Heterodermia pseudospeciosa, Lecania cuprea, Marchandiomyces lignicola, Minutoexcipula miniatoexcipula, Monoblastia rappii, Multiclavula mucida, Ochrolechia trochophora, Parmotrema subsumptum, Phaeographis brasiliensis, Phaeographis inusta, Piccolia nannaria, Placynthiella icmalea, Porina scabrida, Psora decipiens, Pyrenographa irregularis, Ramboldia blochiana, Thyrea confusa, Trichothelium americanum, Verrucaria calkinsiana, V. fayettensis, and Xanthocarpia feracissima. Protoblastenia ozarkana an undescribed species originally recognized from the Ozarks is also reported. This checklist serves as an important baseline for future studies of glade communities in Bibb County and, more generally, for calcareous glades across Alabama and throughout the southeastern United States. KEYWORDS. – Dolomite, limestone, Little Cahaba River, Valley and Ridge Province. 1J. KEVIN ENGLAND – Department of Biological and Environmental Sciences, University of West Alabama, Livingston, Alabama 35470, U.S.A. – email: [email protected] 2CURTIS J. HANSEN – Auburn University Museum of Natural History, Department of Biological Sciences, Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama 36849, U.S.A. – email: [email protected] 3JESSICA L. ALLEN – Department of Biology, Eastern Washington University, Cheney, Washington 99004, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 4SEAN Q. BEECHING – 301 Connecticut Ave., Atlanta, GA 30307, U.S.A. – email: [email protected] 5WILLIAM R. BUCK – Institute of Systematic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York 10458, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 6VITALY CHARNY – 101 Old Rocky Ridge Lane, Birmingham, Alabama 35216, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 7JOHN G. GUCCION – 10313 Dickens Ave., Bethesda, Maryland 20814-2131, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 8RICHARD C. HARRIS – Institute of Systematic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York 10458, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 9MALCOLM HODGES – The Nature Conservancy, 1330 West Peachtree Street, Suite 410, Atlanta, Georgia 30309, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 10NATALIE M. HOWE – 715 Underwood St NW, Washington DC 20012 U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 11JAMES C. LENDEMER – Institute of Systematic Botany, The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, New York 10458, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 12R. TROY MCMULLIN – Canadian Museum of Nature, Research and Collections, PO Box 3443 Station D, Ottawa, Ontario K1P 6P4, Canada. – e-mail: [email protected] 13ERIN A. TRIPP – Museum of Natural History and Dept. of Ecology & Evolutionary Biology, University of Colorado, Boulder, Colorado 80309, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 14DENNIS P. WATERS – 4 Ivy Glen Lane, Lawrence Township, New Jersey 08648, U.S.A. – e-mail: [email protected] 420 INTRODUCTION Lichen research in Alabama has a long history beginning with collections made prior to 1850 by Thomas Peters from Lawrence County, Alabama (Hansen 2003). Lichen collecting in subsequent decades has remained relatively sparse except for peaks of activity in the 1920s by Alexander Evans and again in the 1960s by Herbert A. McCullough (Hansen 2003). McCullough published three papers on foliose and fruticose lichens from Alabama including, from Howard College (now Samford University, Birmingham; McCullough 1962), the Piedmont Upland (McCullough 1964) and the Valley and Ridge Province (McCullough 1967). He collaborated with Mason E. Hale, Aino Henssen and Herbert H. Sierk both in fieldwork and in specimen identification. McCullough was the first person to collect lichens in Alabama systematically on a large-scale and specifically from the central and northern areas of the state. The majority of his collections were transferred to Aino Henssen in Marburg, Germany and are now split between the herbaria of Phillips University Marburg (MB) in Germany and the University of Helsinki (H) in Finland. One of us (JCL) has examined many of McCullough’s collections that have been deposited in H, and when possible, duplicates of these were retained in the herbarium of the New York Botanical Garden (NY). In his research on the Valley and Ridge Province, McCullough (1967) included two collecting locations in Bibb County; “2 mi. E of West Blocton,” and “2 mi. S of Mahan Creek, S of Wilton,” and listed a total of 30 collected species. Located approximately equidistant between those two sites, in northeastern Bibb County, is the Kathy Stiles Freeland Bibb County Glades Preserve (hereafter the Preserve), a striking location along the banks of the Little Cahaba River with a unique substrate and endemic flora which was discovered in the 1990s (see below). In 2006, a small group of researchers visited the Preserve, in what may have been the first organized trip to document the lichen flora of this location (Hansen pers. comm.). More recently, participants of the 2017 Tuckerman Workshop, which was based in Columbiana, Alabama, visited the Preserve in an effort to more fully document the lichen flora. Because this site yielded many different lichen taxa, including several new state records, we decided to compile a checklist of the lichens and related fungi for this unique location. Herein we present the first such checklist from the Preserve, compiled from collections made during the 2017 Tuckerman Workshop, from previous and subsequent collecting trips and from other existing herbarium-based collections known from the Preserve. MATERIALS AND METHODS Site Description. – The Preserve is a 197 hectare (480 acre) site owned by The Nature Conservancy in northeastern Bibb County, Alabama (Ress 2016). It is located at the southeastern terminus of the Ridge and Valley physiographic province, near the boundary with the Coastal Plain physiographic province. The open glades (Figure 1A) have a northeastern aspect and moderate to steep slope, down to the Little Cahaba River. The upper slopes of this site have a unique bedrock of Ketona Dolomite (Figure 1B), a carbonate rock similar to limestone but with an especially high concentration of magnesium and far fewer impurities than other dolostones (Mohlenbrock 2009, Lacefield 2013). The site has areas of exposed bedrock with accumulations of thin soils from weathering of Ketona Dolomite that are high in magnesium and calcium but low in phosphorus and potassium (Allison & Stevens 2001). The large dolomite glades are surrounded by Juniperus-Quercus-Pinus forests on the upper slopes and mixed mesic hardwoods below, running along the western bank of the Little Cahaba River. This uncommon glade habitat and substrate was explored in the early 1990s and resulted in the discovery of eight new endemic vascular plant taxa, eight species never previously reported for Alabama and another 56 plant taxa known from the state but considered rare by the Alabama Natural Heritage Program (ALNHP 2017, Allison & Stevens 2001). The recent discovery of many new and rare vascular plant taxa so near to a major metropolitan area (just 50 miles south of Birmingham, Alabama) was surprising (Mohlenbrock 2009). Field and Herbarium Studies. – On March 30, 2017, Tuckerman Workshop participants spent part of one day at the Preserve gathering lichens according to standard collecting procedures using hammers, chisels, knives and hand-held pruners (Brodo et al. 2001). Lichens were placed in folded paper or paper sacks and stored for identification and later processing. Primary literature used for identification included, Brodo (2016), Brodo et al. (2001), Dey (1978), Esslinger (1978), Harris (1995), Lendemer et al. (2013), and Smith et al. (2009), and standard spot tests (K, C, P) followed Brodo et al. (2001). Chemical compounds in some specimens were also examined using thin layer chromatography following Culberson and Kristinsson (1970) in solvents A, B′, and C. The use of standard dissecting microscopes and compound light microscopes along 421 Figure 1, glade habitats of the study area. A, primary study site at the Kathy Stiles Freeland Bibb County Glades Preserve in Bibb County, Alabama, USA. B, detail of calcareous rocks and soil habitat. Photographs by J.K. England. 422 with UV light fluorescence were also employed in identification. Tuckerman participants who provided collection records along with the corresponding acronym of the herbarium of deposition are as follows: J. L. Allen (NY), S. Beeching (GAM, hb-Beeching), W. R. Buck (NY), V. Charny (NY, hb-Hollinger),

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