Wednesday 10 November 2010

COMMON ORANGE LICHEN ON AN ELDERBERRY TREE

Common Orange Lichen (Xanthoria parietina)
on an Elderberry Tree (Sambucus nigra) 




17 comments:

easygardener said...

Garden centres don't sell pots of Lichen which is a pity. They really are fascinating.
Thanks for the link to your milk bottle. Hope it takes a while for it to fill up!

Lucy Corrander : Photos said...

I suppose lichens are too picky about where they live to make selling them work but they are lovely. The lichen on this tree changes colour depending on the weather - when it rains, the grey-ish bits turn a lovely lush green.

Welcome to Message in a Milk Bottle, Easy Gardener. Thank you too for being the very first person to comment here.

Gary said...

Hi Lucy,
Sorry I haven't been around much lately. Your new blog looks great and I will be following it closely.

Hope all is well with you.

Gary

Unknown said...

Congrats on your new blog, Lucy! I've updated my links to reflect your new identity. And a great photo to start off with.

Christine H. said...

Wow, you can start from the very beginning and post to your heart's content. Yummy lichens...maybe not to eat, but eye candy nonetheless.

Brian PaperSponge said...

What a great photo. The sharpness of the image draws you right to the center. Great colors and detail.

Chuck said...

Another great picture. There are no visuals like this where I live in Texas but it reminds me of my days when I lived in Ohio.

Carver said...

I love this shot. Lichen is so interesting and beautiful in its unique way.

T. Becque said...

Nice detail! I didn't know you could use up space on a blog!?

Janie said...

Lichen seems to take on a personality of its own. The details, and color can draw me in any day. Nice post. I too did not know that space can be used up on a blog?? Did you get a warning message, or you just figured it out?

Dagrun said...

I'll be following milk in a bottle! :) Congratulations with your new blog (and twitter too I see).

Lucy Corrander : Photos said...

Hello Gary.

I look forward to your visits here.

Is your garden surviving the wind and the rain?

Lucy

Lucy Corrander : Photos said...

Thanks Jodi. It's a nuisance moving like this but it's also fun having the opportunity to set things out in a different way - almost like a new venture!

Hello Christine. I certainly wouldn't fancy eating this lichen - but it is lovely. Indeed, all lichens seem to be. I hadn't realised how many of them there are before I went looking to check this ones name.

Thanks Brian. What grips me with this lichen is that it seems to have little yellow satellite dishes growing on it. I understand these are its 'fruiting bodies'.

Hello Chuck. It's fascinating what will grow in one place but not another. This lichen is common near the sea but, because it copes well with nitrogen, is being used as a pollution indicator in towns.

Hello Carver. I pass this lichen a lot. I'm glad I notice how it changes even though it appears static.

Hi, T. Becque and Jane. Blogger gives a generous allowance for photo-memory but it's linked to the email address not just to the blog. This means Picassa and email attachments are bundled in too. I've been posting a photo a day on Pictures Just Pictures since July 2008 and have duplicates in the 'Volumes'. Yesterday morning, a notice came up which said I couldn't post any more photos unless I paid - and there was a little chart along with it to say how much. I don't have the right kind of bank card for making payments over the internet so there was nothing to think about. My only option was to move - and here I am!

Hello Dagrun. Glad you are following here. Yes. I like Twitter. Do you use it too?

Colleen Franklin said...

The bark on this elder looks so old! I forgot their bark gets like this-the elder out on our hillside must have been unwittingly coppiced a few years back when the landlords gave everything a good whack. It's grown back interestingly, more wishbone than tree, and the limbs always seem red & new. I use the tall straight branches each year for stakes, or practicing the fine art of wattle-making. (I'm not very good). The birds & squirrels love it.
In the Abbey Garden I put a Sambucus mexicana, the California native elder, long with a native flax so we could have some native medicinal herbs.....
Anyway, here's to the elder!
Oh, and the lichen! It looks like it has grown little yellow spoons to catch the rain.

Lucy Corrander : Photos said...

Hello Rosa.

I enjoyed reading your comment. I'm forever forgetting how trees come in different varieties. This elder is in such an exposed position it hadn't struck me there might be a version which grows in a Californian (or Mexican!) climate. It highlights how unthinkingly parochial I can be!

This tree was hacked back terribly a couple of years ago but the machines which went along slashing the branches didn't get as far as the trunk.

Aren't the little yellow satellite dishes wonderful! ('Fruiting bodies' I think.)Lichen is such a weird . . . can't even call it a plant.

Other yellow - apparently the yellow tinges are part of the lichen's sunscreen mechanism.

In my mind, lichens are a kind of science fiction . . . something!

Lucy

MyMaracas said...

Beautiful colors and textures, plus sharp focus and great depth of field. And I love the way you notice things like this.

And yeah, lichen is strange. It's actually a fungus plus an algae or bacterium living symbiotically, each relying on the other to keep the structure going. Isn't that a wonder?

Lucy Corrander : Photos said...

Hello MyMaracas. These symbiotic organisms really are extraordinary. I agree.

Lucy