There are thousands of species of lichens that grow in many different forms. Some are flat and crusty, some have leaflike structures that protrude outward and some have hairy filaments. While most ...

Lichens survive in a very wide range of habitats worldwide. Amazingly, more than 400 species can be found in Maryland.

Answer: That orange growth is lichen, not a rust pathogen. Lichen do not harm the tree or shrub in any way. They tend to grow only on that outer bark and stay there, not growing deeper into live ...

The lichen themselves will not cause decline, but they may be a good indicator of the overall health of your tree. An abundance lichen presence concentrated on damaged or dead wood, as your sample ...

If you take a close look at some of the more established trees in your landscape, you may notice something you cannot seem to describe – it may look to you like a kind of fungus on your tree trunk. Is ...

Symptoms are usually the first clue that something is wrong. It can be a fever, a cough, fatigue or a number of other indicators in people, pets or livestock. The severity of the problem sometimes can ...

Q: I have a 27-year-old "Snowdrift" crabapple tree in the front of my home. It looks to have lichen on it - it looks like greenish-gray leaf-like spots all over the tree. I have been pruning it every ...

Q: I am worried about the grayish-green, flaky, roundish spots I am seeing on big tree trunks and branches this spring. I can scratch it off with my fingernails. I think that it is killing my trees.

My tree has lost all its leaves and the bark now has some fungi growing on it? Is lichen killing my tree? Lichen (pronounced lie-ken) gets a bad rap based on its appearance alone. It has been on our ...

Algae, lichens and moss often form green or grey, powdery or mossy, crusty growths on the stems, branches and trunks of trees and shrubs. Pictured here, lichen and moss. This dreary "gray all day" ...

Q. Please tell me what this is. Is it the reason my redbud tree is dying by degrees? I’ve also seen some on my Japanese maple and a Virginia pine. Should I be worried? — J. Castelloe, Chesapeake. A.