Friday Fabulous Flower - not even close

An old friend of TPP, Dr. Chips, sent along this image, a nomination for a FFF posting, and that isn't such a bad idea, so this is pretty unusual for him. This isn't a flower, or even in the technical sense, a plant, although it is a photosynthetic autotroph that can really take your breath away upon first seeing it. This is a lichen, more of a fungus, especially reproductively, but not wholly so either. Lichens are truly symbiotic organisms, a functional and morphological association between a fungus and an algae. The curious thing about the lichen as an organism is that it only looks like this when the association is taking place, but both the algae and the fungus can live apart from the other, however when free-living neither looks like this! Somehow the association of algae and fungus produces a new form, one that is recognized as a lichen. About a year ago TPP posted a blog about the birth of a lichen, how a lichen fungus captures the algae and begins forming a lichen.
This one has a flat, lobed thallus that reminds one of thalloid liverworts to some extent, but there is no real plant tissue present only a highly organized filamentous mycelium. Weird. Dr. Chips took this image on Vancouver Island, and just based on appearance, this lichen may be Peltigera neopolydactyla (the "new many fingered" lichen?).  Perhaps someone more knowledgeable of lichens can assist and provide a verification or a correct ID.  It would be appreciated.

Birth of a lichen

Lichens are symbiotic organisms consisting of a highly organized fungal mycelium enclosing algal cells. What's strange about lichens is that without the algae, the fungus just looks like a fungus. Without the fungus, the algae is just algae. They only take on the form recognized as a lichen when the two organisms are in that symbiotic association, and of course, the term itself means "living together". This presents some interesting aspects of reproduction. This illustration is from the November 2014 issue of the American Journal of Botany.  The sexual reproduction of the lichen is fungal in nature, so to form a new lichen, the fungus must capture a compatible algal cell anew.  This illustration shows this very early stage where fungal hyphae (filaments) have found and encircled an algae cell. The proliferation of the hyphae and the division of the algal cell is a demonstration that the symbiotic interaction, the lichenization, has begun. The accompanying article by William Sanders provides illustrated diagrams of the sexual and asexual reproductive cycles of lichens, all very nicely done.