Toward the end of Week 5, we conducted a revisit to a 2010 collection site attributed to G. Vos retrieved from the Consortium of North American Lichen Herbaria (CNALH). The site was located ~20 miles north of Mount Rainier in the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie Wilderness west of Huckleberry Creek. After finding our way on a network of logs across Huckleberry Creek we were successful in relocating a small population of Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis in an area that had been previously logged. The species was concentrated in a rather small areas growing on a handful of Acer circinatum. The portion of the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest north of Mount Rainier where we conducted our revisit represents another region where we had yet to confirm the current status of the species and collect tissue for our population genetic analyses. Sites that have experienced disturbances such as logging are crucial for better understanding how changes in land use and land cover have impacted the distribution of the species over time and may be shaping the population genetic structure of P. rainierensis in the present.

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A & C. Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis growing on Acer circinatum adjacent Huckleberry Creek n the Mount Baker-Snoqualmie National Forest near Greenwater, WA B. Evergreen undergrad Andrew Restrepo collecting tissue for population genetic analyses D. The few Acer circinatum shoots that were home to Pseudocyphellaria rainierensis at our tissue collection site (Photos by Stephen Sharrett)