Non-local lichens
Foreign Lichens
My friend Peter Schmidt was visiting Germany recently and found this tree branch in a woodland area. He thoughtfully shared it with your local Lichen Hunter. I have no idea what it is, but am going to spend some time with my lichen resources to challenge myself.
On the left there are some distant branches with yellow lichen; a careful look around this woodland might find more interesting species in addition to these bright yellow ones.
Here’s a closer view. Although the resolution is not good enlarged, we can see it is a foliose type of lichen; it has some leafy growth in areas and looks wrinkled, as if it is not tightly attached to the branch, as a crustose lichen would be.
Last summer I posted images from British Columbia, Canada, of the yellow lichens that are very common there in the fir and spruce forests.
The Letharia is a fruticose type lichen; it has branches, grows upright or trailing and is attached to the tree at small, discrete spots, just like a shrub growing in the ground.
Letharia vulpina uses vulpinic acid to make the yellow color, which is poisonous. In some parts of the north it has been used as a poison to kill wolves and other animals. It is toxic to any meat-eating mammal, as well as to molluscs and insects. But it does not affect mice and rabbits! The lichens use vulpinic acid to control the amount of light absorbed. (Lichen Biology, Thomas H. Nash III). The German lichen may use a different chemical to make its yellow color; a mystery I won’t solve today.
This spring I’ll go out looking for yellow colored lichens in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve and Wildcat Mountain State Park. Join me! No matter what we find, we’ll have a good walk in the woods.
Remember, look for the Tiny Ones when you are out walking.
Susan
Share this:
Winter Lichen Hunting Memories
It’s raining tonight (February 23rd) and quite unpleasant outside. Today I retrieved from a drawer the lichen samples I collected last summer in Canada, with the intention of finally identifying the species. While traveling I discovered that the plastic clam boxes that fruit is sold in make great traveling sample containers for all sorts of delicate pieces of lichen as well as shells, bark, fallen birds’ eggs and dead bugs. I like to bring home all those things, look at them for a while then return them to the woods and fields to keep their place in the cycle of life.
Often, in many places, the only way berries and other small produce is sold is in plastic clamshell boxes, so I ended up with a few of them during our travels. I don’t buy food in plastic containers, but made a temporary exception during a few days of the trip. The paper envelopes usually used to hold lichen samples work the best, and they too can rejoin the circle of life when we are done using them. So now I’m sorting out the lichens from their plastic cages, and enjoying the memories of finding them during the summer’s travels.
The Peltigera in British Columbia can also be found here in Wisconsin. When walking the KVR Wintergreen Bluff Trail stop at Lichen Site 4 (the rocky flat area) and look carefully for this species. There is quite a large area of them. Please stay on the trail while looking, so you don’t crush the Tiny Ones! At different times and weathers, these lichens will change dramatically, from being almost invisible to looking like they do in this picture.
Here’s what the bench land looks like above the Columbia River in southeast British Columbia. This is a Nature Conservancy area so has been protected from excessive damage. Much of the bench lands are built on, and the lichens are few in those places.
Walking the trails here, this is what the ground looks like:
While walking, and especially biking through here, looking out at the scenery or the next obstacle to maneuver around, the life on the ground is something no one notices. Yet this microbiome is holding all the larger life in place, creating and protecting an environment, shelter, food supply system, promoting health, preventing erosion and more. As it disappears when we travel over it or dig it up, the diversity and therefore the sustainability of the whole area fails.
When we step on the ground here, it sounds a bit crunchy, and it is; the dry lichens break off and the delicate crust on the surface of the ground is broken open. All dry, open soils naturally have some microbiome crust, unless disturbed. This allows dry grasslands and even deserts to support a tremendous variety and number of living beings, from plants to insects, birds, mammals, reptiles and even humans.
These dry grassy areas in the western areas of our continent should be covered in some form of this microbiome. When visiting these areas, go slowly and look at what is on the soil and rocks, then step carefully. There is a miniature world at your feet as complex as the world of trees, grass and animals we are familiar with.
Leaving the dry grasslands and moving into the more tree covered slopes of the lower mountain elevations, there continues to be much life on the soil and rocks, but the trees also support a vast community of lichens. From deep rainforest communities to dry open pine forest, lichens love it here.
The colors and shapes rival any garden. Each time a new rock is found, the lichen shapes and colors are different. Trees are festooned with bright yellow, pale yellow and greens of Usnea and Vulpicida as well as the grays and greens and blacks of Letharia, Hypogemnias and more.
Yes, I do get those seed catalogs, and can get lost dreaming in them on winter days, but an excellent variation of that pastime is looking at lichen pictures. If there are not enough pictures here for you, try the best lichen picture site ever -Stephen Sharnoff’s amazing website. Add some color and amazement to your gray winter days by sharing this lichen blog and Sharnoff’s site too, with others, especially kids!
Contact us at the Kickapoo Valley Reserve if you want help learning about lichens. Come out and walk the Lichen Trail. Even in winter you’ll find some color and intrigue in Lichen Land. Thanks for reading this blog. Please share with others, to spread the news about our friends in Lichen Land.
Share this:
Lichens and Volcanoes
The past several months watching Kilauea’s changes as she wakes up has been fascinating. I have friends who have a home in this area, so there is a personal interest in what is happening there. As we adjust to the losses and changes for the humans, we are also respectful of Pele’s part in creating the lovely land we know as Hawaii. She knows what she is doing, and over time the foundation she lays for all other life will again support the abundance we are familiar with. After Pele cools off, what happens? For an entertaining account of the volcanic process, read Krakatoa by Simon Winchester
As the lava cools, the new earth is immediately colonized by bacteria that comes floating in on air currents. Also carried by the air are tiny seeds, bits of soil from other places, and…….lichens! Lichens are the first life to colonize the new earth, beginning to add organic matter to the surface as they grow and die, and they also begin their work of moderating the surface temperature and moisture content. They provide shelter for the first insects, who also blow in on the wind, or crawl from adjacent areas. Then the birds and lizards come to eat the insects and lichens, and then the tiny mammals, snakes, and gradually the forest reappears.
Mt. St. Helens in Oregon, has changed dramatically after the eruption 35 years ago. This mountain was covered more in ash than lava, so many of the plants reappeared from under the ash; life did not have to restart from the tiniest bacteria and lichen spores.
Where there is any live topsoil nearby an area such as an industrial site or monocultured agriculture land, where no life has been for some time, the lichens are not always the first to live in those barren places. Seeds already are present, if not in the exposed earth they are nearby, and easily move into a barren area. But the lichens do appear on soil very soon, and when any trees have been growing for a few years, the lichens begin to appear.
The Hawaiian volcano process is a rapid “movie” of how life begins on new earth. Variations of that process occur everywhere, but are less easily observed. Check on science websites or local Hawaiian park sites or private blogs, USGS info, for news on how the land and life changes on the newly formed land.
Happy Lichen hunting!
Share this:
Birds, Flowers, Frogs, Bats…..Lichens!
It’s summer! We are in the season of Frog Walks, night time Bat Surveys, Birding Events, star gazing nights and more. The extravagant displays of color and sound, the always changing feast for the eyes is at it’s best in the Kickapoo Valley Reserve.
Many of us review our familiarity with birds and plants we consider old friends, as they reappear each spring and summer. What have you learned recently, that is completely new, about the ecosystem you are part of? Now that you know at least some of the birds, flowers, trees, bats, mammals and even fungi and insects, what else could be here?
Learning about lichens and their relatives in the fungi world is a good place to start because most of us have not thought much about these neighbors. An essential part of the natural world as we know it is made up of fungi and LICHENS. Lichens influence and in some ways may control the environment. Lichens are everywhere- rock, tree surfaces, and on the ground. Lichens are at least as diverse as any other group of organisms. Lichens are present every day of the year. Lichens may be enjoyed as you canoe down the river, walk on a trail, or sit under a tree watching birds. Lichens are colorful, beautiful, endlessly varied and so easy to get close to.
Take some time to read this website’s information, look at the lichen books at the KVR while you relax in the Visitor Center, and go for a lichen hike with a friend, or give me a call and we’ll go visit Lichen Land to see who’s there this time of year.
Join the KVR Lichen Project this year. Learn about lichens; the world of nature that you think you know will expand dramatically. Becoming familiar with lichens opens a doorway to the ‘web of life’ that all are part of. We mostly see individual parts; the bird, the tree, the river….but none of those are what they are without all the others they relate to aand interact with. Lichens are quintessential collaborators, cooperators, adaptors. Many of the other residents you are familiar with are dependent on lichens to some degree. What can we learn about those relationships?
While the lichens moderates the climate for the tree it lives on, the tree moderates the climate for the earth under it and all that live there, and moderates the air space it occupies, affecting all the air interacts with, on so on the web spreads. How many more relationships like this surround us? What happens when those interactive webs are changed or destroyed? What can we do to steward the health and survival of webs of life we do not understand well? How can we learn to see these connections better, to foster our understanding of what is going on around us?
Learning about lichens and becoming familiar with them as part of the beautiful world you interact with on your hikes and other activities in the green world is one way to enlarge your perspective and through that, your effectiveness in caring for both the KVR and the larger green world around us.
Lichens are a bit harder to find in the depths of summer greenery. Look on exposed rocks especially along the river. Lichens as well as mosses and liverworts abound on river cliffs. The lower parts of tree trunks are always easy to observe and have many lichen species growing on them. Notice the different lichens on different tree species. There are also some lichen species that seem to grow on many tree species. What could be the reason some grow almost everywhere and others are very particular about their location?
Wet weather wakes up lichens. Their colors are bright and they are actively photosynthesizing and reproducing. Take a picture, and compare it with the same lichen at another time of year, when conditions are dry. The lichen may be almost unrecognizable as the same one you saw on a wet day.
Enjoy the lichens wherever you find them this summer. Post a message here if you see any lichens you’d like to share!
Share this:
Lichens and Country Music
Many lichen cannot be named unless they are observed when in a fertile state. One common crustose lichen in the Appalachian region has been observed for many years but never seen reproducing. That changed when a large number of fertile lichen were found on the top of Hangover Mountain in western North Carolina. They were common in many areas but this was the first time anyone had seen them in a fertile state. These lichen were then named….for Dolly Parton. Japewiella dollypartoniana now had a formal name and characteristics to identify it in the future.
Jessica L. Allen and James C. Lendemer, who made the discovery and published their findings in 2015, described the lichen as “….distinguished from other species of Japewia and Japewiella by its sorediate thallus and production of norstictic acid….”. There is more technical description of the lichen that follows.
Japewiella dollypartoniana is described as new to science based on material from the Appalachian Mountains and adjacent regions of the Atlantic Coastal Plain. It is distinguished from other species of Japewia and Japewiella by its sorediate thallus and production of norstictic acid. Placement in Japewiella is supported by characters from fertile populations discovered in the Unicoi Mountains of western North Carolina which have apothecia that resemble those of Japewia tornoënsis (Nyl.) Tønsberg but differ in having a well-developed proper exciple and ascospores without a thick, gelatinous sheath.
Share this:
Lichens from Florida
Cladonia evansii
This gorgeous lichen was found by Julie Hoel in St. George Island State Park, off the panhandle of Florida, late this winter. It is growing in a slash pine forest, on sandy ground. Thanks Julie for sharing this.
We don’t see this lichen in the Kickapoo, but I remember similar lichen in the jack pine forests of the Wisconsin River valley when I was a child. The oak and jack pine forests from Mazomanie, Arena, Spring Green, and Lone Rock area were filled with mosses and lichens. The ground was covered and they hung on tree branches. It was a wonderland of shapes and colors. As a child I knew it was a magical place and I spent many hours there but had no way to know what I was seeing. Now those forests are mostly gone, covered with irrigated, industrial scale, sprayed crops. The lichen are in retreat and mostly absent. With them went the diversity of birds, amphibians and plants that made up that fragile and beautiful land. In those days only a child would recognize the beauty in that dry, unassuming landscape but now some of the goat prairies and grasslands are being restored, and there are remnants of sandy jack pine forests in the river valley.
Julie’s Florida lichen picture inspires me to explore some of the Wisconsin River valley forests that are left to search for my lichen and moss friends from years ago.
I’ll let you know what I find!
Cladonia evansii with its friends, the mosses
photo by Julie Hoel
Share this:
‘lichen’ it from afar
I have had the great fortune to be travelling in Australia since early December. In the midst of visiting friends and family I have also been in search of lichens.
Discovering lichens on a rusty steel hull of a 100 year old gold digging machine in a dried up river bed has been the greatest surprise to me.
The most noticeable difference from lichens at Kickapoo Valley Reserve has been the extreme absence of tree lichens in many areas. While considering this, it clicked that over half of the trees in Australia being eucalyptus and melaluca all decortify every year (lose their bark). Lichens being slow growing communities are not so partial to growing on constantly changing strata.
I was sure I would find many in the damp sub-tropical forests, and farmlands, but was really surprised to discover them in what I would have considered inhospitable locations: dry river beds with dead trees and running rampant across boulders washed by ocean tides and blasted by hot sun. Some of these locations have been in drought for over 7 years. Seasides, bereft of most plant life and old tombstones in dry country graveyards, were populated with many different communities of lichens. I do not know many of their names, but it has been a delight to discover their adaptability.
The colors are quite spectacular, particularly in the moist warm areas of the eastern coast.
Paying attention to lichens on this journey to Australia has added a new dimension to my journey, as I not only witness the drama of this landscape in its large breathtaking vistas, but also able to recognize the miniaturized vistas and complexities of lichen communities in very diverse landscapes.
It is a new depth of exploration and has expanded my vision of forests, seascapes, and dry farms and eucalypt forests.
I wonder what lichens exist in the dry moonscape of Cooper Pedy or the towering red rock of Uluru and the Olgas all places I had the opportunity to travel to in the past, but did not know enough to seek them out.
Im “lichen” these lichens as they are adding a new dimension to my journey.
submitted by mary lou
KVR Lichens 