Monday, February 13, 2012

Driveway decor

At the entrance to a Beach Grove house, a raised corner bed holds periwinkle vines and a painted metal path light, knee-high. On that one lamp, none of the others, and nowhere else nearby, a small collection of lichens grows.

Grey-green leaf lichen, Pincushion sunburst lichen, and, I think, the beginnings of a moss patch.

Feeding on the paint? Or do the birds perch on the lamp and fertilize it?

Zooming in. Look at the photo full-size to see the dark grey hairs growing out of the thalli, near the edges. I don't know if they're reproductive structures or holdfasts, or something else entirely.

7 comments:

  1. It needs a little concrete gnome sitting in its shade or a caterpillar with a hookah lounging on top.

    I've been out photographing lichens and liverworts and have noticed the threads too. Have yet to look them up.

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  2. I have the green ones (as far as I can tell) growing on my truck's camper shell, and the fiberglass shade roof in the backyard. I tried unsuccessfully for years to get them to grow anywhere else.

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  3. i have the same lichens in my garden :)

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  4. Amazing! The yellow one looks like sea squirts. I definitely need to take a closer look at lichens!

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  5. Comment1 "Sea squirts." They do, don't they? I never noticed that before.

    Snail, I like the idea of the caterpillar/hookah. If he sat there long enough, he'd have lichen patterns on his back.

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  6. The yellow one looks like xanthoria polycarpa, it is a nitrogen loving lichen that would probably love bird poop.

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  7. Moss Mom, It does. They're all over here; it's a bird-poopy place!

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