A number of weeks ago I pointed out some lichen growing on a tree to my three year old. Ever since, he has been very enthusiastic about lichen, running from tree to tree in the forest yelling "A lichen tree! And another lichen tree!" and so on, since nearly every other tree has a least a little bit of lichen growing on it.
I've never tried to identify lichens before, so I thought I would give it a shot. First of all, there are very few field guides to lichens. I managed to find a guide in my library by Mason Hale called "How to Know the Lichens".
The lichen on the tree above is a foliose lichen, which means it is flattened and leaf-like. There are 3 types of lichens, the other two are fructose (shrubby or hair-like) and crustose (crusty). I didn't bring my field guide with me, and I didn't collect any lichen to bring home, so that is as far as I'm going to get today in my identification attempts. Even if I did manage to find out that it was called Parmelia crinita, what does that mean to me? Maybe we will just make up our own names.
The kids don't really need (or care) to be able to identify the lichens. All the brilliant colours they come in have been amazing, we've seen orange, yellow, blue, black and grey lichens. They might be best enjoyed in a nameless, mysterious way.
3 comments:
Identifying lichen? Wow.
I'm trying to get my kids to navigate on the computer without my help.
'photogirl' makes you sound like a young geeky teen that young geek boys read about online and want to meet. *LAUGH*
Oh! By the way, why am I not in your list of friends??? Hunh?? :D
Do you have to be under 20 to use the term girl? Maybe I'll have to be 'photowoman', but that doesn't have the same ring to it.
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