Description: Perhaps the most famous of the blister-surfaced, grey, ‘dog lichens’, P. canina is a species of exhausted dunes systems and sandy soils. It should be compared with P. membranacea (described elsewhere) with which it has long been confused and is virtually identical. P. membranacea is a more robust species confined to less calcareous habitats often among tree roots in woodland, with an underside of white veins, raised like railway tracks covered in long, tap-root-like, bottle-brush fashioned rhizinae (root-like organs). In P. canina the veins are flatter, like those on the back of a hand and with rhizinae that are shorter, fluffy and branched. Throughout Ireland.

Key Identification Features:

• Flattened veins on the underside linked to branched, carpet-pile-like rhizinae that do not have a long, bottle-brush shaped ‘tap-root’ profile
• On sandy soils: heavily leached dune edges, blown sand over grazed areas etc.

Original text submitted by Vince J. Giavarini

Distribution Map from NBN: Peltigera canina at National Biodiversity Network mapping facility, data for UK.

iNaturalist: Peltigera canina at iNaturalist World Species Observations database.