UKH

Something I never appreciated until I started rock climbing was that often the colour of rock comes in part from the lichen colonising it, with freshly sheared off parts looking completely different without weathering and without lichen.

Out walking today I saw what I thought was some sort of fungus growing in the moss, with inverted cone shapes, each a few mm in size.  A few google image searches later and I now think they're Pixie Cup Lichen.

I'm not quite sure what the point of this post is, other than to say I find lichen amazing.  Between lichen and slime molds, it makes me wonder about the paths not taken by the evolution of larger life on the planet, and how differently it could have gone. Or may yet go...

What interesting facts or photos can UKC share about lichen?

It’s an age thing, I think. I find lichens, moths, hover  flies, etc, very interesting. 

In fairness, you weren’t wrong about it being a fungus. It is just that it’s a fungus sharing its life with a suitable photobiont. Which in itself is mind-blowing.

https://bookshop.org/books/entangled-life-how-fungi-make-our-worlds-change-...

You'll probably like reading this.  There is a chapter on lichens.

A non-interesting fact: I am allergic to lichen having a publication to prove it (quite the novelty being the author and subject of a case report!). Quite why I am drawn to unrepeated lines on forgotten crags would probably present a psychology journal option. Lichen extract is used in the perfume industry and appears in aftershave, deodorants and other cosmetic smelly stuff I avoid.

Bang on with pixie cup - it's a genus of lichen fungi called Cladonia, they're pretty hard to ID down to the species level but you don't need that level of detail to appreciate how cool they are! I wrote a little article on the lichens and climbing a while back that you might enjoy 🙂 https://www.cragology.rocks/thetroublewithlichen

Their absence is an indicator of atmostpheric pollution especially SO2 in industrial areas. Presumably they are susceptible as they are very slow growing. In industrial areas lichens still grow on cement asbestos roofs which are supposed to absorb the pollutants. Cladonia is valuable as food for reindeer especially in winter.

More of  a question than a fact, but if true it would be interesting. I wonder if the presence and diversity of lichen can be used as a way of approximately dating archaeological stone monuments, in the way that the the number of species per fixed length of a hedgerow can be used as a rough guide to its age? If so, I wonder how the stone type or the more recent intrusion of air pollution might best be taken into account?

Long a lichen fan.

Here's sunburst from earlier today

The Pixie Cup Lichen are pretty amazing - a great photo !

Here's a not so great but interesting picture of old man's beard, I presume this is a lichen but happy to be corrected. I don't recall ever seeing it in the UK, but is fairly common here is Aus.

Whole tree laden....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/194788854@N05/52223479690/in/dateposted-publi...

Close up....

https://www.flickr.com/photos/194788854@N05/52223479400/in/dateposted-publi...

Great, thanks.  It's added to my list of "random books from UKC".

In reply to cragology:

Thanks - that read reminds me how staggeringly ignorant I was of lichens' presence before I started rock climbing.

In reply to Raymondo:

That's absolutely mad.   I think I've seen something similar driving up to the summit of the volcano in La Palma, but I was too busy trying not to spoil the hire car to pay much attention.  One day I'm going back to do the walk down to sea level.

In reply to Jon Read:

I've been interested to find that quite a few of them are edible; made me wonder if a bioengineered lichen could open up some alternatives in post-meat vertical agriculture.  Re: cosmetic smellies - I'd quite like to live in the world without perfume, but at leat I'm not allergic.  I had no idea they put lichen extract in the stuff.

Glentress Forest in Scotland has a large area high up absolutely covered with it. Only place I've seen it though. 

I've seen it over many different areas of Scotland. 

The West Coast has fragments of Temperate Rainforest. 

I was going to say some of those slime moulds did evolve into our government but that's unfair on slime moulds.

Let's here it for lichen... and as a segue remember this feminist Sci fi:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trouble_with_Lichen

I've been round the two way marked paths from the NNR carpark on Loch Maree through Coille na Glas Leitir in 8 different years and it never gets old.

I spotted this on Glasgwm near Cwm Cywarch. 'British Soldier Lichen' or 'Devil's Matchstick':

There's some nice bits along the Mallaig/Morar coast too. Been to them a few times over the years.

If you go for a walk with a botanist, you'll get a few miles;

If you go for a walk with a bryologist you'll get a few hundred metres;

If you go for a walk with a lichenologist you'll be lucky to get out of the carpark.

I had to look bryologist up. I think mosses are really interesting as well - I treasure the mosses about my little estate. One of these years I want to visit the moss gardens in Japan.  One of my favourite local walks is a section of the river where there's half a dozen old channels that now only flow at high water levels, and otherwise become isolated pools that keep the local humidity up; the islets between them are covered in native deciduous trees and there's an abundance of moss and lichen on them - less that genuine temperature rainforest but more than elsewhere locally.  

In reply to AllanMac:

It's amazing that such visual and functional differentiation occurs in a clonal colony.  Then again I was reflecting the other day on another kind of life I met through climbing - piloting a little boat down from Cala Gonone to Cala Fruili I came across some by-the-wind-sailors for the first time.  The same clonal animals make the raft and the sail, each with thoroughly different properties. Amazing.

So I commented on this before and got my numbers wrong (post since removed), but have been doing a bit of reading up on lichenometry, the dating of rocks from lichen growth. The technique has been used to date stone monuments, but it's often used to date exposure of rocks after glaciers retreat. The most commonly used lichen for this is Rhizocarpon, map lichen, due to its slow growth and abundance in arctic and alpine regions. Growth rates vary a lot, ranging from 0.006mm per year in Rhizocarpon superficiale in the Colarado Front Range to 0.94mm per year for Rhizocarpon geographicum in North Wales, so dating can be pretty variable depending on where you are. However, given the size of some Rhizocarpon lichens on glacial moraine in Greenland they must have been growing for at least 1,000 years, with some in Alaska potentially as old as 9,000 years. Which is well old! (This is all from a review paper Armstrong, 2016, if anyone wants to read it let me know!)

Very interesting. Many thanks!

I know someone who was able to make some new lichen records from the Old Man of Hoy after watching Jesse Dufton's 'Climbing Blind' film, I reckon there's loads of cool lichens out there that climbers could find if they knew what they were looking for!

I have black lichen growing on the roof of my van. There's a BMW been abandoned in a private carpark over here covered in lichen, will try to post a pic.

Jerven do an amazing lichen camo bivvy sheet thing. https://www.bushgear.co.uk/products/jerven-bag-king-size

This is an amiable read:

https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9090689-the-lichen-hunters

Fascinating.  I wonder if anyone has gone to do this at Coire an Lochain following the claim from a prof a decade ago that there could have been a glacier at the location in the 1700s?

We we’re walking in an east Durham limestone dene the other week had its remarkably like a temperate rainforest in terms of plants, mosses and lichens.  Much less rainfall but high, forested sides and flowing water conspire the humidity up.  Then waking through an “urban canyon” in Newcastle with a pond and park garden between long, tall apartment blocks I noticed some lichen growing on the paving.  Suddenly hard to stop noticing it…

In reply to David Alcock:

Thanks for the book recommendation.  I have a shelf filling up with UKC suggestions…

Here is an interesting sighting (not that I was looking out for one) of what I assume is a lichen. Granite bedrock with a carpet of moss with these 'things' dotted around. Either something decomposed leaving the main structure behind, or something very weird. I'll have to google it.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/194788854@N05/52284655494/in/dateposted-publi...

Fascinating! Beautiful structure.

I was curious so I've done it for you. 
(And then I was a bit confused until I looked at your profile - but it makes sense if you're in Australia.)

Cladia Retipora aka "Coral Lichen"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pulchrocladia_retipora
https://www.flickr.com/photos/atlapix/34503178042

Good googling Deepsoup. Now you mention 'coral lichen' it does ring a bell.