Lichen Hunting

Weeks are starting to blend together and it finally feels like the crunch is on when it comes to deadlines and things. It was cold when I woke up this morning and the leaves are rapidly changing colour behind the house.
I won't have much more time to harvest dyestuffs before it starts to get cold so I am really focusing on that now. Dan and I know a super secret spot near the house where there are beautiful colonies of lichen, some I've never even seen before. It is only accesible through a narrow spot that is blocked off by huge trees that fell during the hurricane. The other sides are blocked off my steep cliffs and high piles off rock. There are a lot of fallen trees, stones, and a dense carpet of pine needles and fallen leaves. The wood is punctuated with large boulders just covered in curly, hyperbolic green lichen. It's our very own rotten secret garden.

Lichens are so fascinating, they are actually two organisms involves in a symbiotic relationship! They are a combination of a fungus and a green alga or a cyanobacterium. The green alga produces food both for itself and the fungus by transforming energy from the sun into nutrients, this is photosynthesis. The body of the lichen is much different from what either organism would resemble on its own, the fungus supports and surrounds alga cells (to a point). The alga receives minerals that the fungus absorbs through the rock. To learn more check out the wikipedia article on Lichen.

It was easy to get quite a bit of lichen and still be eco-friendly. We only collected bits of lichen that had fallen off onto the forest floor. It was easy to spot since the lichen was so green yesterday due to the mist and rain (this particular kind is usually grey and crisp if it is sunny, dry day). I know it is a foliose lichen, but I am still trying to identify it.

This fruiticose stuff (below) reminds me so much of coral. I took the tinsiest sample and left the slugs dozeing. I think this must be a choice spot for slugs.


This also ties in to the work I am doing now about the colony/the entity. When does a group of living things become an enity or a being? What if they are made out of different kinds of living things, like this lichen for example? Well, I will admit it sounds like a pretty solid argument that the fungus and the alga are two seperate life forms. Sometimes it's not so clear though. What about a portugese man o'war? If you are familiar with them you're probably thinking about something lika a dangerous jellyfish, right? Well it turns out they aren't a jellyfish at all, a portugese man o'war is a colony of assorted polyps that create a gas filled float and pack a painful and dangerous sting. The gas filled float works like a sail above water and the stingers, with poisoned filled nematocysts paralyze prey. Another polyp, called a gastrozooids surround and digest prey. It's all very Sci-fi and alien isn't it. This is what they looks like.

Life is strange and amazing.