You never know what you'll find on a run-of-the-mill trek, but since I was with several botanist friends on the anything-but-run-of-the-mill trails of Avalonia's TriTown preserve, I was pretty certain we'd spot something unusual. This, um, thing, draped over the Fern Moss of an extremely wet rock certainly fit that bill, and, I had to admit, I wasn't sure what to call it. One of the botanists thought it might be a Liverwort, so, since I had no other real alternative, I told everyone that I would look it up in Ralph Pope's Mosses, Liverworts, and Hornworts: A Field Guide to the Common Bryophytes of the Northeast. Those red projections from what I assumed were leaves didn't jibe with the one thalloid Liverwort that I knew, and when I dove into Ralph's accounts, there was simply nothing like this on the pages. So I did what any journalist would do: I sent pictures to the author and gently begged for help. A few hours late, he was good enough to offer enlightenment. "Your lovely photos are of a lichen, a Peltigera species," Ralph explained. "The common name is dog lichen for the apothecia [the red reproductive shapes at the edge of the leaves] shaped like a dog's tongue—at least I think that's the reason for the name." Good enough for me.