Devil's Matchstick Lichen

Devil's Matchstick Lichen is one of the most charismatic rock lichens of the Pacific Northwest. From a pale grey-green granular base crust it sends up dozens of erect, pale stalks, each a centimetre or two tall and capped with a shiny, jet-black, roughly spherical head — the resemblance to a spent matchstick is exact enough that the name needs no explanation.

The genus Pilophorus sits in the Cladoniaceae, alongside the more familiar cup and reindeer lichens, and shares with them the two-part construction of a primary crust or squamule layer plus erect secondary structures (pseudopodetia) that carry the fruiting bodies. Where Cladonia typically bears brown or red apothecia on hollow stalks, Pilophorus produces solid stalks and hard black heads.

The lichen also carries cephalodia — small dark swellings housing nitrogen-fixing cyanobacteria — embedded in the base crust and lower stalks, making it a three-partner symbiosis and an important nitrogen contributor on bare rock.

Base crust

A thin, granular to warty, greyish white to pale grey-green crust spread over the rock, often continuous across a patch and sometimes with tiny scales. Small dark brown to blackish cephalodia are scattered within it and around the stalk bases.

Stalks (pseudopodetia)

Erect, simple or occasionally branched, 0.5–2 cm tall and about 0.5–1 mm thick, pale grey to greenish grey, matte to slightly rough, and solid rather than hollow. They arise directly from the base crust, usually in clusters, and stand more or less straight.

Heads

Each stalk is tipped by a single glossy black, rounded to slightly flattened apothecium 1–2 mm across, hard-surfaced and shining when wet. These are the visual signature of the species and are almost always present on mature colonies.

Overall

The combination of a grey granular rock crust, upright solid grey stalks, and hard shiny black terminal knobs is diagnostic; no colour change occurs on bruising and the crust cannot be lifted intact from the stone.

This lichen colonises hard, non-calcareous rock — basalt, andesite, granite, quartzite and similar siliceous stone. It seeks shaded, humid microsites: roadcuts through forest, streamside boulders, cliff bases, north-facing rock walls, talus in old-growth stands and mossy rock ledges beneath a closed canopy.

Its stronghold is the humid Pacific coastal belt of North America, from Alaska and British Columbia south through Washington, Oregon and northern California, extending inland into moist mountain forest; related species occur more widely in northern regions. Perennial and evergreen, it can be found in every season, though the stalks stand out most against dark wet rock after rain.

The lichen combines a fungal framework with a green algal photobiont for photosynthesis and, in separate cephalodia, cyanobacteria that fix atmospheric nitrogen. On bare, mineral-poor rock this nitrogen fixation is ecologically significant, seeding early nutrient inputs that later support mosses and other colonisers on the same surface.

Pilophorus acicularis is a pioneer of freshly exposed rock — road cuts, landslide scars, quarried faces and recently deglaciated stone — and can be among the first conspicuous organisms on such surfaces in humid forest. Growth is slow and colonies persist for many years. Reproduction is by ascospores from the black terminal heads and by fragmentation of the granular base crust.

Cladonia species with upright stalks are the main confusion, but their podetia are hollow, often cup-shaped or antler-like, and their apothecia are brown or bright red rather than shiny black; the base is usually made of green scale-like squamules rather than a flat granular crust. Cladonia cristatella and its relatives have scarlet heads, ruling them out immediately.

Stereocaulon species also form pale erect structures on rock, but their pseudopodetia are branched and clothed in granular or coral-like phyllocladia, and their apothecia are dark brown and often clustered rather than a single glossy black ball on an unbranched stalk. Other Pilophorus species differ in stature and branching — P. clavatus has shorter, thicker, often club-shaped stalks, while P. cereolus is smaller with a more squamulose base crust.