Miniscule Comes to Mind

  I walk loops around our backyard for the exercise, and so I can watch for any photographic opportunity.

Lichens are common on both live and dead wood.

The Whitewash lichen (Phlyctis argena) above is similar to Common Button lichen (Buellia stillingiana), which has more black dots. The spores are produced in the dots, called the apothecia.

I rotated this and the next picture, because it makes it easier to see the lichens.

Candleflame lichen (Candelaria concolor) is the yellowgreen one on the bark of a hackberry tree. Research online shows that its color can vary.

My Lichens of the North Woods book gives 0.1-0.5 mm for the width of the its lobes!

A Foliose Lichen

I find all kinds of lichens when I pick up sticks in the yard.

The larger lichen with the leafy appearance is a foliose lichen.

Blister lichen, with the dark disc-shaped fruiting bodies, is also a foliose lichen. The leafy part shows better in the upper right of the picture.

The black “hairs” along the edges of the lichen are called “cilia.” I seldom see them on lichens.

Portrait of Foliose Lichen

This lichen grows on a tree in my backyard.

It doesn’t know its name. I don’t know its name,

which in no way diminishes my enjoyment of its discovery.

Two More Lichens

This winter was so drab. Seemed like the sun seldom shone — and it wasn’t my imagination.

I don’t burn all the sticks/small logs I find in the yard, for obvious reasons. I wonder if anything lived in the cavity of this blister lichens (Physcia stellaris)?

here the blister lichens grew with the Candelaria concolor lichen. It commonly grows on elm, ash and sugar maple trees.

A Small Snow Cave

A small snow cave partially covers ed blister lichen (Physcia stellaris)  growing on a limb in our dawn redwood tree. It’s also called a star rosette lichen. It’s a foliose lichen — a leafy looking lichen (say that three times fast). They reproduce by spores, which is the black in each disc.

Another New Lichen

This lichen grew on a dead tree, near a trail, along a lake.

I was able to identify it with my Lichens of the North Woods book.

It’s a Smooth Axil-bristle Lichen (Myelochroa galbina).

The size of the fruiting bodies varied considerably. It looks as if the cups opened, and a thin “sheet” of spores flaked off.

It was quite a variable lichen.

A New Lichen

One of my lichen books calls these blister lichens. The other one calls them star rosette lichens.

Their scientific name is Physcia stellaris.

Black is the most common blister lichen I find here in southern Illinois.

Some blister lichens have brown discs,

and others have green.

The discs are called apothecia and are where the spores are produced.

Then I found a blister lichen with gray discs in the backyard yesterday.

Now I wonder what other colors that I might find?

An Interesting Stick

Our weather finally turned off nice for a change, and I found myself picking up sticks in the yard.

 I picked up a stick under the sweet gum tree and found two surprises underneath — a small shelf fungi and a slug. The shelf fungi was so small I couldn’t see if the underneath side was smooth or had pores.

There was no shortage of lichens on the fallen wood. My Missouri book “Walk Softly Upon the Earth” calls this a blister lichen (Physcia stellaris). My “Lichens of the North Woods” book calls it a star rosette lichen.

Then I found these yellow-green lichens.

It looked like they’re more yellow when they were young. The black had me confused, because it looked more like a crust than like the top of the smooth black ones above.

I do get frustrated at times when I’m trying to identify a find and can’t.

For me it’s more of a matter of learning to see, find and enjoy.

Ice Encrusted

Luckily, a recent ice storm didn’t produce the amount that was forecast.

A thin layer of ice encrusted most surfaces.

While walking a loop around the backyard, a short dead tree with lots of lichens caught my attention. One of my lichen books calls this a blister lichen, and my other one calls it a star rosette lichen. It also goes by Physcia stellaris. It is commonly found on deciduous trees.

 A lichen is actually two plants living in a symbotic relationship — a  fungi and algae. The fungus provides a moist habitat for the algae to live in, and it also supplies the algae with nutrients as it decomposes the surface it’s growing on.

Nature has such artistic abilities.

Pear Tree Remants

A strong wind blew all night and all day.

I had just picked up all the fallen branches out of this dead pear tree yesterday. Today’s wind broke off  branches, limbs and even one of the trunks.

This tree was one of my favorites because of all the butterflies the rotting pears attracted.

Lichens growing on the tree attract my attention now. I decided to just enjoy and not try to identify them.

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The pears rotting and their attracting butterflies was one of the highlights of summer. All the butterflies above are hackberry butterflies, except the top one which is a question mark.

Red spotted purple on the left and a viceroy on the right. Viceroys have an extra black band on their hindwing that the monarch lacks.

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Common buckeye

The pears also attracted bees, wasps, night flying moths and ants to name a few.

So, obviously, I miss the pear tree being alive.

Now that I’m starting to learn lichens, I hope the tree stands for many more years.