lichens and moss

The pale-blue puffy-looking spheroids are powder-puff lichen, (genus Cladina), called "deer moss" (though they are lichens, not moss) because deer feed on them. The yellowish vertical structures are the sporophytes of a moss (probably a clubmoss, genus Lycopodium). The leaves of the moss are mostly buried in the leaf litter, but some are visible in the right half of the picture. Photo taken at low elevation in Baxter State Park in October 2003.