L I C H E N candelarius.
Yellow Candle Lichen.
CRYPTOGAMIA Alga.
G en . Ch a r . Male, scattered warts.
Female, smooth shields or tubercles, in which the
seeds are imbedded.
S pe c . C h a r . Fronds crowded, upright, entangled,
yellow, minutely lobed, jagged, and divaricated.
Shields minute, flat, o f the same colour, with a
thick inflexed margin.
Syn. Lichen candelarius. Linn. Sp. Pl. 1608. Fl.
Sugc. tv/. 2. 408. Ach. Prod. 92. FPcstrin^.
Lafv.fasc. 2. 21. t. 5. Hoffm. Enum. 5 7 . t. 9. f. 3.
Relh. 457 ?
L. concolor. Dicks. Crypt, fasc. 3. IS . t. 9. ƒ . 8.
With. v. 4. 62. Hull. 298. Abbot. 265.
Parmelia candelaria. Ach. Me.lh. 187.
N o T very unfrequent on old oaks, barndoors, posts, or
rocks, in which last situation we first noticed it at Blackford
hill near Edinburgh in 1782. Our botanists in general have
confounded it with L . vitellinus, t. 1792, from which, considered
as the true candelarius, Mr. Dickson justly distinguished
this by the apt name concolor. Although the Linnaean° herbarium
contains no authentic specimen, we must rely on the
Swedes for determining this species, it being well known
among them, and used for staining candles yellow at festivals.
The admirable plate in Mr. Westring’s work on the uses of
Swedish Lichens in dyeing, drawn by no less a hand than the
celebrated Acharius himself, clearly ascertains the plant.
The fronds are seldom more than a quarter of an inch high,
and grow in dense patches, upright, but closely entangled, and
when young somewhat imbricated. Each is much branched
and divaricated, flattened, minutely and sharply cut and jaoo-ed;
the ultimate segments obtuse, rather powdery. Shields s^nall,’
scattered, lateral, nearly sessile, flattish, with a thick irtflexed
border externally warty. The colour of the whole varies from
a pale greenish lemon to a golden hue, but the bases of the
fronds are pale or whitish, and the disk of the shields orange.
We conceive this to be by no means a crustaceous Lichen,
and that it is more allied to vulpinus than to any with which it
has been compared or confounded.