Lichens take a very long time to regenerate, most only grow a few mm a year. Some are protected or endangered on top of that. A good example is Lobaria pulmonaria, highly sought after by dyers because it produces a rich orange/brown dye in wool and other fibres. L. pulmonaria takes a considerable amount of time to grow, the thallus (body) only begins to reproduce after 25 years so is mainly found in older growth forests. Depending on the area, a person could come through and decimate a population just trying to collect enough material to dye a sweater. I’m not saying you should never harvest any lichen (its often unavoidable for ID purposes) but it is always a good idea to be conscious of your impact on a population of very slow growing organisms. The best way to harvest lichens is to salvage it off the ground after a wind storm or something like that, when lichens detach from the substrate they are rarely able adapt to the new environment and eventually die so its not as big a deal if you take that home because its going to decompose anyway. I have also seen where folks harvest no more than 1/10th of the population or harvest the outer edges of the thallus so that most of the colony remains. Really just depends.

Very cool, Cladonia always make me happy

Nice. Patiently waiting to find one of these baddies in the wild.

They really are. Alan Rockefeller has an awesome talk on mushroom photography that’s been uploaded to yt and man it has me stepping up my game this season.

Thanks, probably why I love Teloschistes so much, amazing colour.

I’m in Canada but I have used this website before because they have a good section on morphology (for beginners at least). I cannot speak to the species info though.