Lichen samplers

Lichens on bark, found underneath cottonwoods at Oyster Bay:

Leaf lichen, and crust lichens, maybe bark barnacle.

Another piece of bark. Black, brown, green, yellowish dots and circles.

I look at the photos in my guide, read through the descriptions, and decide that I know what species a lichen is. Then I read it all again and change my mind.

It doesn't matter: they're beautiful, no matter what species they are.

Folded lichen

Lichen on rocks near Gold River:

I like the way this patch folds down over the sharp edge of the rock. The pink dots are fruiting bodies.

The black spots and orangey smudges on the rock beneath are also lichens.

Another patch on the same rock.

Green lichen on rock

In the tiny woods at the end of my street, a block square, a tossed salad of big-leaf maple, Douglas fir, salal, Oregon grape, huckleberry, evergreen ferns, and the odd street weed, I was looking for lichens. Portable lichens; something to show a kid who couldn't remember seeing one. I zig-zagged through the bush for a while, but if there were any lichens - and I remember finding some here in the summer - they were buried under a layer of mushy maple leaves. Or still up in the trees.

The only lichens I found were not quite portable.

A crust lichen, probably a pimple crust.

On another rock, closer to the edge of the bush, more exposed to occasional sunlight, paler green

These were finer-grained, smoother and greener than the whitish grey bulls-eye lichen I see on many rocks, usually in more exposed areas. In this shady patch of forest, there are few exposed rocks, but most of them carried the green patches. I couldn't identify them.

Mostly yellow

We'd had a few days of good, steady rain, and then the sun came out, warm and inviting; it was time to go mushroom hunting. I was on my way down to Salmon Point, where there is always a good crop, when I turned to look at the trees over Oyster Bay as I passed. And the light shone on them, and they were yellow.

I got no further. I spent the rest of the afternoon at Oyster Bay.

I always park facing this tree. It's glorious at all seasons.

The internet is wonderful, and the photos it carries can transport you anywhere, but it can't do this: the first thing I noticed, passing the gate to the wild field, was the scents. Imagine a perfume made up of golden leaves, dying brown leaves, grass, the aroma of wet earth, the spicy tang of evergreens, the sweetness of crabapples half eaten by the birds and hornets, a bit more dry grass, almost hay. Add in a whiff of salt water, and the sombre note of black eelgrass out in the lagoon. Got it?

As close as a photo can get to a scent. Random shot, beside my path.

The old apple tree. The apples are gone now. The birds have had their fill.

Down in the grass and weeds, two toasted-bun mushrooms.

Aphid on a fallen maple leaf.

Zooming in on that aphid, running from the camera now.

Even the rocks are decorated for fall. Yellow and white crust lichens, bird guano lovers. These rocks are sometimes covered at high tide.

Yellow "sunny face" lichen on another rock.

So I still have to hurry down to Salmon Point to find those mushrooms before the rain sets in again.

Ceci n'est pas une poste

I'm too sleepy to post. I did too much, drove too far. I'm going to bed.

Ok; may as well add a photo.

This is not a post, either. It's an old log. With lichen.

Goodnight!

Lichen on rock

These bull's-eye lichens on rock often look as hard and gritty as the rock itself.

Placopsis gelida. The lichen has no underside: it's attached firmly to the rock, right out to the edges.

Little River wetland, Comox.

Devil's matchstick

Beside the Upper Campbell Lake, the highway runs along the bottom of rocky cliffs, dotted with lichens and mosses. There, I discovered this tiny patch of black-topped matchsticks.

Devil's matchstick, Pilophorus acicularis, surrounded by crustose lichens.

A closer look.

I examined a good length of rock face, and found only this one, tiny patch.

The surrounding lichens, Placopsis gelida, Common bullseye, I think.

With my fingertips to show the size.

The middle red arrow points to the licheny cliffs.

Bull's-eye!

On the shore of Menzies Bay, just above the usual water line, lichens decorate large rocks.

Bull's-eye lichens, Placopsis sp.

Zooming in on one of the targets. The roughened, round structures, mostly toward the centre, are reproductive organs.

Another bulls'eye, on a rock higher on the shore. This one is a pale green; whether it's a different species, or just damper, I can't tell. Note the bit on the far right; it's blue-grey, and the leaf shape matches those on the previous rock.*

The red arrow points to the lichen. I was following the trail to Ripple Rock, at the narrow point of the channel, but stopped here.

*Update: On INaturalist, this one has been identified as a Rockshield, Xanthoparmelia sp.

Bullseye lichen

The passage of time marked in textures ...

From outer, new edge inward; leafy, greenish thalli shrink, turn grey, then whitish and crumbly as they mature.

In crustose lichens, the area along the margin is where the most active growth is taking place. ... Most crustose lichens grow only 1–2 mm in diameter per year. (Wikipedia)

Reindeer, pixies, and no bears.

In the upper Bella Coola valley, I stopped at Burnt Bridge to look for mushrooms. The forest floor here is often thick with boletus (edible if you can find them without worms; they make a nice, beefy gravy), Russula (they say they're edible, but you may as well eat erasers) and fly agaric (definitely not edible). But my timing was off; there were no 'shrooms, not even puffballs.

But there were lichens, and a bear tree; even better.

A reindeer lichen, with mosses.

More reindeer. The dark specks on the tips are fruiting bodies. (Click for a better view.)

Mosses, evergreen needles, and a densely curled lichen.

Leaf lichen on a dead tree branch.

Many lichens on a rock. Large leaf lichen, tiny pixie cup cladonia, a smaller leaf lichen, and several species of tiny crustose lichens.

And the bear tree? I've seen these several times in this patch of forest; dead trees that the bears have been using to sharpen their claws on and maybe to scratch their backs with. This one was ripped from knee-height to well above my head.

Do the bears choose a dead tree, or is it dead because the bears chose it?

I didn't see any bears.

There's always lichen

With the rain, come the rain lovers. The fungi, the slimes, the lichen.

At Crescent Beach, yesterday, I examined one lichen-encrusted tree.

The common flat-leafed grey-green lichen: flat, loosely attached lobes, tiny fruiting bodies, shiny black lower surface. Above it on the trunk is an acid-green leaf lichen, and a grey crust covered with round, saucer-like apothecia.

Another branch, more leaf lichens, more crust, and a spiky, thin-leafed cluster. And this is a confused tree; look at the base of the branch on the left. See the new pink bud? Thinks it must be spring, given the constant warm(ish) rain.

The same branch, zooming in. And there's a white dusty heart, for Clytie.

I didn't even notice until I was trying to identify that green stuff, that this section of branch has 4 or maybe 5 red mites on it. Do you see them?

While I looked at lichen, Laurie clambered through the bush, dodging blackberry canes, to get close to this big clump of shelf polypore.

On a well-rotted log, pierced by dead blackberry canes, and tinted with bright slime.

Rock lichens are like snowflakes.

Super-snowflakes.

Lichen on rock, Mud Bay Station Park

I've come to that conclusion after the better part of an hour searching through photographs of crustose lichens on rocks.

They're even more like snowflakes than the snowflakes themselves; snow at least comes in fixed geometric shapes, and is usually white. Among the lichen, there are no two alike, according to any criteria you may name. Except that the crustose ones lie flat.