Here’s another lush miniature landscape, this one from a walk along the coastal path this morning, the lichen growing on a wooden fence post, exuberant in the clean fresh salty air.
Lichen landscape, 2
04 Friday Feb 2022
Posted in lichen
Category Archives: lichen
Lichen landscape
28 Friday Jan 2022
Posted in lichen
How luscious is this?! Punctuated by shrub-like mosses, the multitude of colours like a kaleidoscope of flowers in bloom – it’s a miniature landscape of lichen.
U is for unidentified
26 Sunday Dec 2021
Posted in fungi, insects, lichen, wildflowers
This post is really an acknowledgment of my lack of knowledge – everything shown in the photos below remains unidentified, and these are just some photos I’ve kept. Most photos get deleted once I’ve spent a little time trying to put a name to their subject, but failed. It may sometimes seem as if I can put a name to most flora and fauna I see but that’s definitely not the case. And I’m okay with that. I don’t need to identify everything – in fact, unless I’m searching for something specific, it’s often much nicer simply to look and admire, be amazed and enjoy.
Spot the spider
24 Wednesday Feb 2021
I was checking out the lichens and mosses on this tree trunk when part of the grey bark moved. This tiny spider, which I think is a Zebra spider (Salticus scenicus), was so well camouflaged that I hadn’t even noticed it.
Barrage lichens
04 Thursday Feb 2021
Posted in lichen
Cardiff Bay Barrage is a monument to concrete, 135,000 square metres of concrete – in fact, it received an award from The Concrete Society soon after it was completed. And lichens love having so much concrete to colonise!
According to that same Concrete Society, ‘As the concrete ages, the surface alkalinity is reduced by carbonation and the action of rainfall, thus providing a more suitable environment for biological growth.’ And, as lichens are sensitive to air pollution, the almost constant blasting of fresh air aids their lush growth, as you can see from these photos, taken during one of last week’s exercise walks.
Fencepost lichen
05 Tuesday Jan 2021
Just one old fencepost, wood species unknown, but look at the number of lichen species it’s home to, as well as the lichen-loving Springtails. It’s a multifarious microcosm of the wider environment, a miniature landscape of vibrant colour and diverse shapes. Old fenceposts are usually worth a closer look.
359/366 Winter white
24 Thursday Dec 2020
With no chance of a white Christmas for me, I thought I’d share some of Nature’s whiteness instead.
161/366 Mite galls on Lime leaves
09 Tuesday Jun 2020
Tags
Eriophyes mites, gall mites, gall-causing mites, galls on Lime leaves, lime galls, Lime trees, mites
These stopped me in my tracks!
I’d enjoyed a nice amble around a local park and was on my way home when I spotted these incredible galls and just had to stop for some photos. The galls are caused by tiny mites that spend the cool winter months huddling in cracks on the tree’s bark, then head out on to the leaves when they sprout in the springtime.
The mites are leaf-sap suckers, and their sap sucking causes a chemical reaction in the leaf, which in turn prompts the leaf to produce these small, conical, hollow growths. The mites are incredibly tiny – less than 0.2mm long apparently – so they’re almost never seen, whereas their cosy gall homes can grow to 8mm long and, when they’re as bright as these ones were, are very obvious on the leaves.
I’m not sure which mites these are as I’m not sure which tree species this is. One mite species, Eriophyes tiliae, is the gall causer on Large-leaved lime trees (Tilia platyphyllos), Common limes (Tilia x europaea) and some hybrid Lime species, and another mite, Eriophyes lateannulatus, causes very similar galls on Small-leaved Limes (Tilia cordata) and hybrid Limes.
56/366 Spots and splashes
25 Tuesday Feb 2020
Tags
British fungi, British lichens, Common jellyspot, Cosmeston Lakes Country Park, Illosporiopsis christiansenii, lichenicolous fungus
Amidst all the greys and browns and dull greens of the wintertime natural world, there are still wonderful wee spots and splashes of colour to be found. These are some I found during today’s stomp around Cosmeston, a rather rapid stomp trying, unsuccessfully, to avoid the rain showers.
I’m not good at identifying lichens but I do love their fresh, bright yellow-greens, especially on the twigs and small branches that have recently blown down from the tree tops.
The tiny bursts of lollipop pink are Illosporiopsis christiansenii, a lichenicolous fungus (that’s a fungus which is parasitic on lichens, usually on Physcia tenella and sometimes on Xanthoria parietina).
And the pretty pops of orange, found on several fence posts, are Common Jellyspot fungus, Dacrymyces stillatus.
29/366 Cladonia lichen
29 Wednesday Jan 2020
One of the Cladonia lichen species is the food of Reindeer but I doubt this is it, though I don’t actually know which Cladonia species this is. As you can perhaps guess from the snippet of sign showing in my photo, the lichen was growing well on a signpost at the Wildlife Trust reserve I visited today. The brownish blobs on the tops of some cups are where the spores of these attractive lichen develop.
earthstar 
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