I found the most amazing tree last weekend, with gorgeous lichens all over one side.
The red-capped lichen is a new one for me - I think it's Haematomma babingtonii. The textures are amazing, and they all look awesome together, especially with the moss to set it all off
Watercolour. A thin intrusion of mafic basalt running through felsic Lewisian gneiss. The two rock types, with their different mineral content, have strikingly different lichen communities. From Raasay, NW Scotland. A second, and probably final, sketch of this - I have some other interesting rocks to try...
„Do you have hobbies?“
„Oh, pretty normal stuff, you know? Like Cladonia.”
”…?”
”Yeah, like sitting in the woods and looking at it, taking 10.000 photos of it, spending an incredible amount of time during the day thinking about it. The usual stuff what everyone does.“
„… o-okay …“
I found Red-fruited Pixie Cup lichens (Cladonia pleurota) two days ago and posted this photo on iNaturalist.
iNaturalist postet it as observation of the day on three pages.
Here is the result in likes and % of their followers of these pages:
Instagram 961, 0.88% of the followers liked it,
Facebook 249, 0.32% of the followers liked it,
niX 193, 0.29%.
I don't use any of these three platforms.
Now, with only 20 likes my Mastodon followers could win. 😉
🌿🍃 I did an #experiment to see how various types of #lichen respond to moisture. I found a stick with many different kinds of lichen and sprayed water on it every few minutes. Here is a 1 hour #timelapse video!
I did an #experiment to see how various types of #lichen respond to moisture. I found a stick with many different kinds of lichen and sprayed water on it every few minutes. Here is a timelapse video!
This is such a beautiful little thing - "Coral Lichen", aka Pulchrocladia retipora.
It was growing in a glacier-carved alpine valley we walked through over Christmas.
There's some ghosting in the image because it was a handheld focus-stacked shot, but I think it's clear enough to get a sense of how amazing the lichen is. I so want to go back and get some better photos sometime!
One of the problems with identifying lichen is the tendency for several types to grow in close proximity to each other, so if I ask what type of lichen is in this photo there's more than one correct answer.
Lichen patterns on a tree trunk. I think these are physcia caesia and possibly a candelariella, but I'm really not really confident about either. I just like the patterns and textures!
“Rainforests in the UK are part of the Coastal Temperate Rainforest biome. This habitat is globally rare and some say is more threatened than tropical rainforest. Ideal conditions for temperate rainforest are found along the UK's western seaboard, including the west coast of Scotland.”
The richness of lichens in these parts of the UK is partly because the western extremities of the country have been least affected by air pollution.