Peaking

Each year at this time I start thinking that if I could just get up above the trees the colors would be better or brighter somehow, but they never seem to be and I’ve never been really happy with any photo that I’ve taken that way. But maybe this time would be different, I hoped. The weatherman told me that we were at the peak of our fall colors, so last Saturday I decided to climb Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard to try again.

I kept seeing dark spots on the fading, pale orange striped maple leaves (Acer pensylvanicum) so I had to take a closer look. The quarter size spots were made up of many smaller specks.

I haven’t found a reference to anything similar so I can’t say what they are at this point. They looked like hardened drops of a liquid but I doubt the leaves would weep in such concentrated areas and not all over. If you know what they are I’d love to hear from you.

Something ate these little brown mushrooms and tore the stems when they did so. I’ve never seen this before and I’m not sure what animal would do it. There is everything from chipmunks to moose to bears in these woods so without tracks or other clues it’s hard to know. I do know that many kinds of little brown mushrooms can make a person very sick, and some can kill.

A pasture appears on the right side of the trail and I always stop here for a breather. The farm that owns this land raises Scottish highland cattle and my hopes of seeing them were raised by the regular snapping of an electric fence at just about knee and waist level, but the cattle never showed up. I had to pay attention so I didn’t get tangled in that fence with my metal monopod, so maybe it’s a good thing they didn’t.

The trail takes a sharp 90 degree left turn and parallels the pasture for a time. It also becomes quite rocky in this stretch. Not far after the turn, maybe a hundred feet or so, there is a break in the trees and brush to the right. If you follow this short path after just a few steps you come to a good view of Mount Monadnock on the right. And the electric fence in front of you.

The reason I chose Pitcher Mountain is because it has a full 360 degrees of viewing area on its summit. If the light is harsh in one direction as it was in this shot of Mount Monadnock from the trail, it often isn’t quite so harsh in a different direction. At least that’s what I was hoping. Finding correct exposure settings can be tough with some colors in such bright light.

Beech trees are starting to turn and they seem to be right on schedule. Though they are among the last to turn along with the oaks, most had turned fully by Halloween last year.

Before too long the fire tower glimpsed through the trees tells you that you’re very near the summit.

The old fire warden’s cabin might be in for a rough ride this winter if nature decides to make up the 15 inch rain deficit with snow. Though I’ve climbed up here in the winter several times if that happens I probably won’t be up here to see it.

You can turn and look back just above the warden’s cabin to see the pasture from above, along with Mount Monadnock in the background. The view from the summit to Monadnock would be almost directly south.

The fire tower is the second one to stand on this peak. Ironically the first wooden tower built in 1915 burned in April of 1940 in a fire which destroyed 27,000 acres of forest, including the tower and all of the trees on the summit. It was the most destructive fire in the region’s history. Stout cables keep this one from blowing off the mountain but there is still little to protect it from a large fire.

If you’re standing where I was in the previous photo looking at the tower and walk around to the left side of it, what I call the near hill seems to be close enough to touch. I don’t know its name or if it even has one.

It was hard to pay attention to far off colors when colors like this were so close by on the summit.

Scattered rock posy lichens (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) added to the orange colors of fall. I was thinking one day about how we rarely see orange in nature for most of the year but then all of the sudden we are saturated with it in the fall. The orange pad like parts of this lichen are its fruiting bodies (apothecia) and the grayish, brain like part is the body (thallus.)

Black and white crater lichens seemed to stare back at me from the stones. I think they are Diploschistes scruposus, simply called crater lichen after their cup shaped black fruiting bodies (apothecia,) which are surrounded by a stark white or gray body (thallus.) They grow on exposed rock all over the earth, even in the Polar Regions.

Pitcher Mountain is known for its blueberries, and they turn a beautiful red in the fall. They supply most of the red that can be seen in the near distance in many of these photos.

There were a surprising amount of berries that the birds and pickers had missed, but they were shriveled.

As far as the eye could see the trees were turning. I’m surprised to see how many more deciduous trees than evergreens there are in this photo.

I’m not sure what the name of the mountain in the distance is but it seemed to be higher than the one I was standing on and it wasn’t Mount Monadnock. It was quite far away but unfortunately I didn’t pay any attention to what direction it was in.

This birch tree was almost leafless but its comrades more than made up for its lack of color. It seemed a kind of exclamation point, as if colors like these needed to be emphasized.

I think this photo is my personal favorite from that day because it has all of the colors I saw in it. It also shows the incredible beauty that can be found up here.

It seemed strange to see the natural birdbath full of water in the middle of a drought; it must have rained recently. I’m sure the many birds that I heard are very grateful.

I’m sorry that this post was so photo heavy but our autumn “season” is really very short and we’re lucky if we see three weeks of the kind of colors that I saw on this day, so I went a bit overboard. Though I don’t usually climb strictly for the views on this day that’s what I came for and they were very good, with little haze.

To see what others cannot…
You must climb the mountain.
~Ron Akers

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Lichens

As flowers start to fade and leaves begin to fall my thoughts often turn to lichens, mosses and all of the other beautiful things you can still find in nature in the winter. We’ve had two or three days of drizzle; nothing drought busting but enough to perk up the lichens. Lichens like plenty of moisture, and when it doesn’t rain they will simply dry up and wait. Many change color and shape when they dry out and this can cause problems with identification, so serious lichen hunters wait until after a soaking rain to find them. This is when they show their true color and form. The pink fruiting bodies of the pink earth lichen in the above photo for example, might have been shriveled and pale before the rain.

Pink earth lichen (Dibaeis baeomyces) closely resembles bubblegum lichen (Icmadophila ericetorum.) One of the differences between the two is the length of the stalks that the plump pink apothecia sit on. They are longer on bubblegum lichen than they are on pink earth lichens. Both are very beautiful things that are rarely seen in this area. The whitish thallus, or body of the lichen, grows on soil; usually on dry acidic soil near blueberry and sweet fern plants.

Bright orange poplar sunburst (Xanthomendoza hasseana) is a beautiful lichen with its large disc shaped, sucker like fruiting bodies (apothecia) which are almost always showing. It’s found on tree bark and provides a lot of color in winter when there are no flowers to see.

Another sunburst lichen, the elegant sunburst (Xanthoria elegans) was exposed to ultraviolet radiation, cosmic radiation, and the vacuum of space for one and a half years and when it was brought back to earth it grew on as if nothing had happened. Many believe that lichens are virtually indestructible and are therefore as close to immortal as any earth based life form can be.

British soldier lichens (Cladonia cristatella) like to grow on damp wood like rotted stumps and logs, but I’ve found them on buildings, fence posts, and built up forest litter on boulders. At this time of year I don’t pass too many mossy old tree stumps without having a glance for British soldiers.

Scattered rock posy lichen (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) is both beautiful and unusual with its brain like body (Thallus) and orange fruiting discs (Apothecia.) This one was growing on stone in full sun. It is about as big as a quarter now, but when I first met it years ago it was about the size of a penny.

Lichen identification can sometimes be tricky. Though it resembles scattered rock posy I think this is rosy saucer lichen (Ochrolechia trochophora.) It was growing on stone, but even though the book Lichens of North America says that it grows on tree bark a little further research on the website Images of British Lichens shows that it grows on tree bark or stone. Based on that information and the fact that I can’t find a similar saucer lichen that grows in New England, I’m going with rosy saucer lichen. Even though it has rosy in its name its apothecia can range from pink to orange, according to what I’ve read.

It didn’t work out very well but I put a nickel behind these pixie cup lichens (Cladonia asahinae) to give you an idea of how small they are. The photo came out looking like golf tees in front of a full moon. A nickel is .83 inches in diameter and the round cup of the golf tee shaped pixie cup might be .12 inches on a good day. You wouldn’t fit an average pea in the cup, but a BB from an air rifle might sit in one.

I had to really push my camera to get this shot so I could show you the inside of the cup of a pixie cup lichen. The nearly microscopic red dots on the rim of the cup are this lichen’s fruiting bodies (Apothecia.) The tan colored scales are leafy growths called squamules. A squamule is a lobe of the body of the lichen (Thallus,) and some lichens are squamulose, meaning they’re made up of small, leafy lobes. I’m not sure what the objects in the cup are, but they’re extremely small.

Powdery sunburst lichen (Xanthomendoza ulophyllodes) was growing on a stone. This foliose lichen is easy to see, even when it’s small, because of its bright orange yellow color. This lichen really likes moisture and is often found growing near channels that carry water on stone or bark. This one was about the size of an average aspirin. Lichens are a good indicator of air quality, so if you aren’t seeing them you might want to check into your local air quality.

Lichens like the common goldspeck lichen (Candelariella vitellina) in the above photo are here year round for us to enjoy, and once the leaves fall many lichens become even easier to see. Look for this bright yellow crustose lichen on stone. Crustose lichens form crusts that tightly adhere to the substrate that they grow on and usually can’t be removed without damaging it.

As its name implies maple dust lichen (Lecanora thysanophora) grows on the bark of maple trees, but also on beech, oak, and basswood. One of the easiest ways to identify this lichen is to look for the white fringe around its perimeter. This is one of those lichens that I never saw until I stumbled across it one day, and now I see it everywhere. This example was about 3/4 of an inch in diameter, or about the size of a penny.

Cumberland rock shield lichen (Xanthoparmelia cumberlandia) likes to grow on boulders and that’s where I found this one. The body (Thallus) is described as being “yellow-green to sometimes bluish green” and the fruiting discs (Apothecia) are “cinnamon to dark brown.” The body of this lichen always looks like someone dripped candle wax on the stone to me.

This is a close up of the apothecia on a Cumberland rock shield lichen. Lichens are made up of a symbiotic relationship between fungi and algae or cyanobacteria. Technically apothecia are “fungal reproductive structures, in which the fungus reproduces itself through the production of spores” This is not the only way that lichens reproduce, but it is common and the apothecia are often beautiful and well worth watching for.

Beard lichens are common enough; they even fall from the trees on windy days, but this beard lichen is growing on stone and that’s very uncommon, in my experience. I think this example must be bristly beard lichen (Usnea hirta,) which can grow on wood or stone, but I must see a hundred growing on wood for each one growing on stone.

There are many different kinds of beard lichens and the differences can be subtle, but the fishbone beard lichen (Usnea filipendula) stands apart because of its resemblance to the backbone of a fish. This lichen seems to prefer growing on spruce but I’ve seen it on other trees as well. Though it isn’t rare I don’t see it often. Lichens in the Usnea genus contain usnic acid and have antiseptic / antibiotic properties. They have been used since ancient times throughout the world to heal wounds.

There are places in these woods where reindeer lichens drift like snow, and in colder climates they lie under the snow for months. As their name implies they are an important food source for reindeer, and they paw through the snow to find and eat them. Reindeer lichen is very slow growing at about an eighth to three eighths of an inch per year and if overgrazed or dug up, it can take decades for drifts like the one pictured to reappear. There are two types in this photo; the green star tipped reindeer lichen (Cladonia stellaris,) and the gray reindeer lichen (Cladonia rangiferina.)

Gray reindeer lichen in this area is silver gray, almost white, with a main stem and branches much like a tiny tree. Each branch tip is a brownish color with a globe or pear shaped fruiting body called a pycnidium. The Native American Ojibwa tribe were known to bathe newborns in water in which this lichen had been boiled, and other tribes drank tea made from it. It has also been eaten, but if you plan on eating lichens correct preparation is everything, because some can cause serious stomach problems.

It’s easy to see how star tipped reindeer lichen comes by its common name; each branch tip ends in a star shaped cluster of four or five branches surrounding a center hole. This lichen seems to be a favorite of reindeer; they will often leave the gray reindeer lichen until last and eat this one first. In Europe this lichen is used in the pharmaceutical industry as an ingredient in antibiotic ointments.

One of the most beautiful lichens that I find growing on stone is the smoky eye boulder lichen (Porpidia albocaerulescens) with its blue apothecia. The blue color seen in the above photo is caused by the way light reflects off a waxy coating on the fruiting bodies, which is very similar to the “bloom” found on plums, blueberries, and grapes. It’s as if pieces of the sky had been sprinkled on the stones when the light is right, but the apothecia can also appear black or gray depending on which direction the light happens to be coming from. The greenish-gold background color is the color of the body (thallus) of this crustose lichen.

I hope this post has shown how beautiful and interesting lichens are, and how easy they are to find. Lichens grow virtually everywhere including on building facades, sidewalks and rooftops, so they can even be found in cities. Many are quite small though, so you have to walk slowly and look closely to find them. Once you’ve seen a few you’ll start seeing them almost everywhere you go.

If you will stay close to nature, to its simplicity, to the small things hardly noticeable, those things can unexpectedly become great and immeasurable. ~Rainer Maria Rilke

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Time for a Climb

We had a week of wonderfully warm temperatures that I thought had probably melted all the trail ice so last Sunday I thought I’d give Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard a try. There was something I wanted to see.

Thankfully the trail was ice free because this one would have been tough with ice on it. There was mud in spots but that was far easier to get through than ice.

I saw some witch’s broom on a blueberry. Though there is nothing odd or surprising about that this witch’s broom was growing on the blueberry plant’s roots, and that’s something I’ve never seen.

This photo shows witch’s broom on the branch, which is where you’d expect to see it. Witch’s broom is a deformity described as a “dense mass of shoots growing from a single point, with the resulting structure resembling a broom or a bird’s nest.” The two examples shown were found on highbush blueberry (Vaccinium corymbosum) and were caused by a fungus (Pucciniastrum goeppertianum). This fungus spends part of its life cycle on the needles of balsam fir (Abies balsamea). When it releases its spores and they land on the stems and leaves of the blueberry, it becomes infected. The fungus overwinters on blueberry bushes and in the spring again releases spores which will infect even more balsam fir trees and the cycle will begin again. In my experience witch’s broom doesn’t affect fruit production.

The stone walls and what’s left of the apple orchard near the summit are all that is here to remind climbers of the Pitcher family, who forever gave their name to this mountain that they farmed in the 1700s.

When you’ve been surrounded by trees for your entire life and then come into a place like this there’s really no way to describe how it makes you feel. If there was an accompanying sound it would be a great rushing whoosh.

When I reach the meadow I always turn to look back, and there is Mount Monadnock just over my shoulder as it has always been. It’s as if it were a big brother, always watching over me.

Pitcher Mountain isn’t a long or strenuous climb so before you know it you get your first glimpse of the fire tower through the undergrowth.

But on this day there was something different; someone was washing the windows and that could only mean that the tower was open. It wasn’t that surprising because the forest fire danger is very high right now due to the lack of snow this winter. I could have gone up for a visit but there was a family with children here and I wanted the kids to have a chance to see the views. I wouldn’t stand in the way of anything that might get them interested in nature. I was happy enough to see that there was someone watching out for fires because when you live in a 4.8 million acre forest you think about such things occasionally, especially in spring. In April of 1940 a fire destroyed 27,000 acres of forest, including the fire tower and all of the trees on the summit.  It was the most destructive fire in the region’s history.

The old fire warden’s cabin speaks of an earlier time when they actually lived up here when the fire danger was high. I think they must rotate in and out on shifts these days because the cabin doesn’t seem to get any use. I’m always surprised that it has made it through another winter.

I always look at the meadows from up here to see if I can see where the Scottish Highland cattle that are raised here are, but I’ve never seen them.

There are hundreds of scattered rock posy lichens (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) living on the stones on the summit but only a few were showing their orange, pad like fruiting bodies (apothecia.) When I see them I’m always surprised things like this that sometimes seem so fragile can survive with no protection from the elements.

I thought I’d try to get a shot of the fire tower looking up one of the guy cables that keep it from blowing off the top of the mountain. The highest wind ever was recorded was here in New Hampshire but that was on Mount Washington, not Pitcher Mountain. That wind reached 231 miles per hour and was recorded April 12, 1934 by the Mount Washington observatory staff. On that mountain there are heavy chains holding the buildings down.

Here on Pitcher Mountain the wires are fastened to the mountain by turnbuckles attached to steel eye bolts that have been screwed into the rock.

The natural depressions in the rock collect rain water and make very good bird baths when nobody is watching, I would imagine. They were an unbelievable shade of blue; much darker than the sky above them.

I saw several mountains over in Vermont with snow still on the ski trails but I can’t give you their names. I keep telling myself that I’ll look at a topographical map and learn their names but it never seems to happen.

Unfortunately I don’t know the names of the lakes either.

There are several lakes that can be seen from the summit and I’m guessing that one of them must be Granite Lake in Munsonville, but I don’t know which one it is. This one looked like it might still have a little ice on the shoreline.

I don’t usually come here for any particular reason but the red maples are starting to flower down in the lowlands of Keene and I thought I’d see if they were doing the same up here. When the thousands of trees on the surrounding hills all blossom at once there is a red haze that colors the hillsides and I wanted to see if I could catch it in a photo, which is much harder than it sounds. I thought this photo showed it just a little in the lower half but since I’m colorblind I’m easily fooled.

Mountains are not Stadiums where I satisfy my ambition to achieve; they are the cathedrals where I practice my religion. ~Anatoli Boukreev

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Things I’ve Seen

I wondered during our recent severe cold snap how the birds and animals were getting on. There still seems to be plenty of food for them but they use it up fast in weather that is so cold.  A group of bull thistles (Cirsium vulgare) had been picked over but still had seeds in the seed heads. This European native is considered invasive here but many birds eat its seeds and a group of plants is a good place to see goldfinches and juncos. When in flower hummingbirds and bees do a lot to pollinate the plant and ensure there will be another seed crop.

The leaves of the bull thistle might have passed but the many sharp spines live on. Prickles on the leaf surface are a good identifying feature of this thistle. It is also called spear thistle, for good reason.

What I think were aster seed heads had been picked clean of seeds but the bracts remained. We call them dead at this stage, but to me they are as beautiful now as they are when they’re blossoming. Goldfinches, cardinals, chickadees, evening grosbeaks, finches, titmice and other birds and small animals eat aster seeds. Native American tribes burned the flowers and leaves and used the smoke in sweat lodge ceremonies. They also had many medicinal uses for the plant and included parts of it in a smoking mixture they called kinnickkinnick.

I’ve known about the woody seed cones on the northern white cedar (Thuja occidentalis) for a long time but I didn’t know which birds ate them until recently. Robins, common redpolls, pine siskins, and dark-eyed juncos eat the seeds and many small birds use the tree to hide in. The Native American Ojibwe tribe thought it was sacred because of its many uses, and maybe it was. They showed 16th century French explorer Jacques Cartier how to cure scurvy with the leaves of this tree and he was so impressed that he named it Arborvitae, which is Latin for Tree of Life. He had trees with him when he returned to Europe, and Thuja occidentalis became the first North American tree to be introduced there.

Each individual seed cone on the northern white cedar looks as if it was carved out of wood and then polished to a satiny shine. Of course to have fruit on a plant, which is what a cone is, you first have to have a flower. This tree flowers in late May to Early June and the small green, egg shaped female flowers have blue tips on their overlapping scales. They grow in clusters and are easy to find.

I solved a year old mystery when I pulled a small tuft of cattail seeds from a seed head and took a photo of it against the black of my glove. I first noticed a long white angle hair like filament with a seed on the end last year. The wind had blown it onto a lichen that grew on tree bark and at the time I thought it was a dandelion seed. Now I know it was a cattail seed. In spring after the male red winged blackbird finds a mate he will line the nest he builds from dried cattail leaves with the plant’s soft seed down.  Man must have learned something by watching the bird because the fluffy seed down was used to stuff mattresses for centuries.

I thought I’d go and visit a couple of lichen friends recently. This poplar sunburst lichen (Xanthomendoza hasseana) grows on a tree at a local shopping mall and is a favorite of mine. I’ve never seen it growing anywhere else. The odd thing about it this year is how few spore bearing apothecia it had. The apothecia are the little cup shaped objects that look like the suckers on an octopus arm and they are usually much bigger and more numerous than what are seen in this photo. Even so it’s still a very beautiful lichen.

Scattered rock posy is another beautiful lichen that I can thank for showing me how fast lichens can grow. When I met this example it could have sat on a dime (.70 inches) but now, about 5 years later, it would take up most of the real estate of a quarter (.95 inches.) Following what I’ve seen in this example I’m guessing that it gains about an inch in diameter every 20 years, so if you found one that was five inches in diameter it would be about 100 years old. Its frilly orange pads are its apothecia, where its spores are produced. The body (thallus) of this lichen is grayish and brain like. It tends to grow in a mound.

The two orange lichens I showed previously aren’t the only orange things I’m seeing this winter; I’m even seeing orange wood. I’m guessing this might be birch, which can sometimes have yellowish wood and reddish heartwood. What made the wood pictured so orange is a mystery. Brazilian satinwood, also called yellow heart, is orange colored but I doubt very much that pieces of it would be lying around in a New Hampshire forest.

And then there are orange oak leaves, but I think that they’re caused by the sun shining brightly on their normally brownish surface. I’ve also seen pink oak leaves, but I don’t think that their color has anything to do with light. I think pink is a normal for certain oaks.

While I was admiring oak leaves I saw this gouty oak gall. I wish I’d gotten a better photo of it but at least this one shows the structure fairly well. Gouty oak gall is caused by a wasp called, not surprisingly, the gouty oak gall wasp (Callirhytis quercuspunctata). In spring the wasp lays its eggs in expanding plant tissue and secretes chemicals that will cause the abnormal growth seen in the photo. The gall grows quickly and once the eggs hatch the larvae feed on its tissue. It can take two years or more for the gall wasps to reach adulthood. One adult exits the gall through each hole.

The parts of the willow that would have once been leaves were converted into a gall when a fly called a gall gnat midge (Rabdophaga strobiloides) laid an egg on its stem. The resulting larva released a chemical that convinced the willow to produce this gall rather than the leaves that it normally would have. The little pink larva rests inside all winter and emerges as an adult when the air temperature warms up in the spring.

This close-up of the willow pine cone gall shows its overlapping scales, which remind me of shingles. Even original ideas come from somewhere and I wonder if mankind didn’t come up with the idea for shingles by studying something like this.

I saw a crab apple tree that was loaded with crab apples that were about an inch in diameter. I think they were probably too big for a bird to eat but I was surprised that deer and other animals hadn’t eaten them. They had hung on the tree for so long they were turning purple. Though we think the apples we’re eating are native, crab apples are really the only apples native to North America. The apples we know originated in Central Asia, where its wild ancestor, Malus sieversii, is still found today. Apples are thought to be the first cultivated tree and have been grown for thousands of years in Asia and Europe. North American apple cultivation began 1607 in Jamestown, Virginia. Settlers had come prepared with seeds, cuttings, and small plants from the best European stock and the trees grew well here; by the end of the 19th century 14,000 apple varieties were being grown. Many were inferior varieties and for one reason or another fell out of favor and have been lost to the ages. Today 2,500 varieties of apples are grown in the U.S. and 7,500 varieties of apples are grown worldwide.

Thank you to Tim Hensley and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden for the article A Curious Tale: The Apple in North America, for some of the information used here.

It is the light that makes frost crystals appear so three dimensional even though they grow flat on glass, so if I were to try to paint them I’d  have to start with a dark canvas. Artists know that there can be no light without darkness, and wise artists know that the same is true in life.

Seeing, in the finest and broadest sense, means using your senses, your intellect, and your emotions. It means encountering your subject matter with your whole being. It means looking beyond the labels of things and discovering the remarkable world around you. ~Freeman Patterson

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Lichens

When the flowers fade and the leaves have all fallen many think that there’s nothing with any color left to see, but that isn’t true. There’s still a lot of color out there even in winter, but it comes in smaller packages and you have to look a little closer to find it. Some of the best colors can be found on lichens like the beautiful poplar sunburst lichen (Xanthomendoza hasseana) in the above photo. This lichen is found on tree bark and is almost always fruiting, which the sucker like, disc shaped fruiting bodies (apothecia) show.

Chances are good that if you go looking for lichens you’ll see many gray crustose lichens that don’t appear to be very exciting at first glance…

…but when you give them a closer look you’ll find that even lichens that seem drab and boring will often have some color and might be very interesting. I think the one with the tan fruiting bodies in the above photo might be the crab’s eye lichen (Ochrolechia tartarea.) One of the best identifying characteristics of this lichen is the notched rims around its apothecia. I’ve never seen another lichen with them.

Lichens like the common goldspeck lichen (Candelariella vitellina) in the above photo are here year round for us to enjoy, and once the leaves fall many lichens become even easier to see. Look for this crustose lichen on stone. Crustose lichens form crusts that tightly adhere to the substrate that they grow on and usually can’t be removed without damaging it.

Pink earth lichen (Dibaeis baeomyces) looks a lot like bubble gum lichen (Icmadophila ericetorum.) One of the differences between the two is the length of the stalks that the pink apothecia sit on. They are longer on pink earth lichen than they are on bubble gum lichen. Other than that they look much the same.

Pink earth lichen is an interesting crustose lichen that I find growing in large patches on acid, sandy soil in full sun along with blueberries and sweet fern.  It is uncommon and I know of only one or two places where it grows.

This beautiful little scattered rock posy lichen (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) taught me how fast lichens can grow. A few years ago it could have sat on a penny with room to spare, but now it is more than quarter size. The orange pad like parts are its fruiting bodies (apothecia) and the grayish, brain like part is the body (thallus) of this foliose lichen.

Crustose rock disk lichens (Lecidella stigmatea) look a lot like tile lichens (Lecidea tessellate,) but tile lichens have black fruiting bodies that are sunken, or concave, and rock disk lichens have black fruiting bodies that are raised or flat. These lichens are very common on rocks of all kinds and grow in full sun.

This photo shows how the black apothecia stand slightly proud of the body (Thallus) of the lichen. This is an important identifying characteristic when looking at gray lichens with black apothecia, so you need to get in close with a good loupe or macro lens.

Noting whether or not the lichen’s fruiting bodies (apothecia) have rims is important when trying to identify lichens. I think this gray crustose lichen with rimmed black apothecia might be a crater lichen (Diploschistes scruposus.) It grew on stone. A similar lichen is the cowpie lichen (Diploschistes muscorum,) but it grows on soil.

One of the things I like about lichens is how they grow virtually everywhere, so you don’t have to search for them. This post and rail fence had them all over it.

This lichen garden was on the top of one of the posts. It had common powder horn lichens and red British soldiers growing in it.

This is a closer look at a British soldier lichen (Cladonia cristatella). It’s about the size of a wooden matchstick. I wish I had seen the white lichen with black apothecia to the left but I didn’t see it until I looked at this photo. British soldier lichen gets its common name from the British redcoats who fought in the revolutionary war.

There were many examples of beard lichens on the fence. This one is a fishbone beard lichen (Usnea filipendula,) named for the way its branches resemble the backbone of a fish.

I’ve tried for several years to identify this green beard lichen but I still don’t know its name. I’m fairly sure that it’s in the Usnea family of lichens but I’m not sure which one. It grew on the fence right alongside other gray Usnea lichens.

There is a low mist in the woods—it is a good day to study lichens. ~Henry David Thoreau

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Time for a Climb

Early last Sunday morning I set out to climb Hewes Hill is Swanzey, which takes you to Tippin Rock. I don’t know what I was thinking but I wore sneakers instead of my hiking boots and by the time I had  crossed the field to get to the trail head my feet were soaked from the heavy dew. One unusual thing about this photo is that there is a cloud in it. That’s been a rare sight around here this summer.

Dew wasn’t the only thing in the field. The red clovers saw their first frost of the season.

Each leaf was covered in ice crystals, but it wasn’t enough to harm them. By the time I had come back down the lone cloud had disappeared and the sun was full on the field, but there wasn’t a sign that anything had been damaged by frost.

The trail was shaded and much cooler than I expected. The steady climbing kept me plenty warm enough though.

Mossy stumps tell the logging history of this place but it’s still very hard to picture these hills barren of trees as most of them were a hundred years ago.  One very unusual thing about this particular piece of land is its lack of stone walls. I was looking for them but didn’t see a single one. I didn’t think it was possible.

You have to look closely at those mossy stumps because not all that is green is moss. I saw several stumps covered with greater whipwort liverworts (Bazzania trilobata.) The trilobata part of the scientific name refers to the three tiny lobes at the bottom of each leaf. Though its common name includes the word greater this is a very small liverwort, but the fact that it grows in large colonies makes it easier to see.

This trail is well blazed but many aren’t. I’m not sure that those who maintain trails understand how important blazing is, especially at this time of year. Though well-worn trails might seem obvious to those of us who follow them regularly, when the leaves fall they cover them-often to the point where they can’t be seen. Without blazes on the trees it’s very easy to lose your way in the fall and I’ve had several people tell me that they won’t go to one place or another because the trails are so poorly marked. I think that people who are unfamiliar with a trail should help blaze it, or at least have a say in where the blazes appear.

Sometimes trail blazers get a little carried away, but not often.

This tree started down a crooked path but finally decided to straighten up. Much like a few humans I know, I thought as I continued on up the trail.

In the past when I’ve done a post about this place I’ve mentioned how “Captain Obvious” must have put this sign up, but I can’t get a good shot of both the sign and the rock it points to to prove it.

The sign is mere feet from this 40 ton glacial erratic boulder, which would be real hard to miss even in the dark. The boulder gets its name from the way it rocks (tips) back and forth if you push it in the right place. I’ve never been able to move it but I’ve talked with someone who saw a group of kids all stand on one end to make it move. If you look closely at the underside you can see that it comes down to a point like the keel of a boat. Someday I’ll meet a group of younger people up there who’ll be frantic to make it tip.

Meanwhile though, I think I’ve finally solved a mystery about this rock that has bugged me for quite a while. A photo from circa 1900 show this face of the boulder covered with lichens, but as you can clearly see in the above photo there is hardly a lichen on it.

Here is the photo that I’m speaking of. This is the same face of the boulder as that seen in the previous photo and it’s covered with rock tripe lichens (Lasallia pustulata.) The mystery was, how did they all disappear in 100 years? Lichens don’t do that; there should be more of them, not fewer.

I’m not sure who the lady in the photo is but she illustrates very well how big this stone really is. I’d guess that it’s about 8-9 feet high, 18-20 feet long and 8-9 feet wide.

Anyone who has worked in a park or a cemetery knows that the easiest way to remove lichens from stone without harming the stone is with a wire brush, and here is one tied to this tree just a few feet away from the boulder. Really, I wondered, someone has that much free time? I appreciate their efforts and I know their heart is in the right place but a naked rock looks a little out of place and unnatural when all the other rocks in the neighborhood are wearing lichens.

Rock tripe (Umbilicaria mammulata) is a large green lichen that fades slightly and turns crisp like a potato chip when it dries out. It sticks itself to stone by way of a single, navel like attachment point. The rest of this lichen hangs from this central point and when wet enough feels like a cooked egg noodle. I can imagine that scrubbing them off stone with a wire brush would be challenging.

I came here early in the morning because last year I climbed in the afternoon to take photos of the fall foliage and I was disappointed that the bright sunlight didn’t let the colors come through very well. If you stand where I was standing when I took this photo the sun shines directly at you in the afternoon and the camera doesn’t seem to be able to cope with such blinding light, even if I underexpose. This morning light from the left is gentler on the eyes and colorful foliage should be much easier to see.

For now we’ll have to imagine the brilliant reds, oranges, and yellows. And if we’re real lucky a purple might appear here and there.

There are some amazing outcrops of stone up here, with cliff faces so high and sheer that rock climbers come here to climb. The one pictured was small compared to the one the rock climbers use, and it was as big as a 2 story building.  That’s a full sized white pine tree standing there; I’d guess 50-75 years old.

The rocks have lichens like this scattered rock posy (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) all over them. I was surprised to see the orange fruiting bodies (Apothecia) considering how dry it has been here. This is a small lichen that looks completely white or grayish unless you look closely.

I couldn’t come up here without stopping to say hello to my friends the toadskin lichens (Lasallia papulosa.) They’re beautiful, interesting little lichens and I like to visit them when I can but they don’t make it easy; the only place I’ve ever seen one is on top of a hill. They are a cousin of the rocktripe lichens and the two often grow side by side. I think of them as rock tripe lichens with warts. They fasten themselves to the stone in the same way, and you can see the navel at the top center of this example. The tiny black dots are their spore producing structures (Apothecia) which they seem to have year round.

I don’t want to be the one who says life is beautiful. I want to be the one who feels it. ~Marty Rubin

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Time for a Climb

It has been a while since I last climbed Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard, so I went over recently to see if anything had changed.  This mountain gets its name from the Pitcher family, who settled here in the late 1700s.

Even though Pitcher Mountain is, at 2,152 feet (656 m), the second highest mountain in this area after Mount Monadnock, most of the elevation can be gained by driving, so once you park where the Pitcher family’s farmhouse used to be you only have to hike for about 20 minutes. If the gate that the fire warden passes through was open you could drive within a stone’s throw from the top with a 4 wheel drive vehicle.

Some ferns along the trail were taking on their ghostly fall colors.

The meadow was bathed in wall to wall sunshine as I expected because clouds have been a rare commodity this summer. The distant haze told me that this would probably not be the best day for viewing the surrounding landscapes from the top.

Bristly dewberries (Rubus flagellaris) grow along the path and many ripe berries hadn’t been eaten by wildlife. This plant is closely related to the blackberry but instead of standing up straight the prickly vines trail along the ground. The berries look more like black raspberries than blackberries though. I see the red berried swamp dewberry (Rubus hispidus) far more often than this black version.

It’s no surprise to find these plants grow along the edges of the meadow. Plants with sharp thorns like raspberries and blackberries were often planted with hawthorn trees along boundaries. These thorny, prickly plants can form an impenetrable thicket which nothing much bigger than a rabbit can easily get through. 16th century English poet and farmer Thomas Tusser told how to enclose a field in this poem:

Go plough up, or delve up, advised with skill,
The breadth of a ridge, and in length as ye will,
Then speedily quickset, for a fence ye will draw
To sow in the seed of the bramble and haw.

The trail gets a lot rockier along the meadow and a lot sunnier too. There is something about this photo that really pleases me, but I can’t put my finger on it. Maybe it’s because it reminds me of an impressionist’s painting.

A brightly colored leaf caught my eye.

The fire tower comes into view when you least expect it. The 5 acres at the very top of Pitcher Mountain are owned by the New Hampshire Forestry Commission. They first built a wooden fire tower here in 1915 but in April of 1940 the most destructive fire in the region’s history destroyed 27,000 acres of forest, including the fire tower and all of the trees on the summit. The present steel tower is a replacement and, because of the lack of trees, offers a full 360 degree view of the surrounding hills.

The old fire warden’s cabin still stands but doesn’t look like it sees much use even though the tower is staffed from April through October. I wouldn’t be at all surprised if it had been taken over by small animals.

The cabin is nestled between the forest on one side and the mountain on the other so it probably doesn’t see much wind, but nothing can protect it from the snow and it sees a lot of it.

The original tower needed wind protection and was chained down to the rock in several places using these stout eye hooks.

The newer tower also has to be anchored against the wind. I’ve seen it blow quite forcefully up here, especially in winter. I wonder how often the tower gets struck by lightning. It bristles with 4 lightning rods, so I’m guessing that it sees plenty.

As I suspected, the views were less than ideal. Mount Monadnock could just be seen through the heavy haze. I’ll remember the summer of 2015 as hazy hot and humid with endless blue, cloudless skies.

No matter which direction you looked the view didn’t improve but it was still nice to be up here catching the breeze on such a hot and humid day.

The view across to the nearest hill wasn’t bad. As you stand on the mountaintop this small hill looks almost near enough to touch, but getting to the top of it from here would probably be quite a hike.

I wonder if 1873 is the date this marker was put here. A 250 dollar fine seems like it would have been an impossible sum to raise in those days.

Every time I come up here I see something I’ve never noticed before and this time it was these deep grooves in the exposed bedrock. Though all of the rock up here is scarred by glacial movement these grooves weren’t made that way. I think they were chiseled into the stone by man, but for what purpose I can’t guess.

Something else I’ve never seen here is a pile of cut brush but of course cutting it must be a constant chore, otherwise trees would quickly obscure the view. I’ve cut a lot of brush in my time and I can imagine what a job it must be to do it here, so I’ll take this opportunity to say thank you to those who work so hard for the rest of us.

In spite of the dry conditions common goldspeck lichens (Candelariella vitelline) were fruiting. This crustose lichen contains a yellow pigment called calysin and was once used in Sweden to dye wool yellow. It must have been difficult scraping it off the rocks that it grew on.

This dime gives an idea of how small the goldspeck lichens in the previous photo really are.

Scattered rock posy lichens (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) were also fruiting. Each disc shaped orange fruiting body (apothecia) grows to about .04 inches (1mm) across. They grow in large colonies on the exposed rock up here.

Sometimes when I sit on these mountaintops I think back to the early settlers and how they must have felt looking out over unbroken forest as far as the eye could see. You had a gun, an axe, and yourself to rely on and that was all. As I was wondering if I would have attempted such a risky undertaking a plane flew over and dragged me back into the 21st century.

As it flew over the near hill and off into the haze I started the climb down, which for some reason is always tougher than the climb up.

When was the last time you spent a quiet moment just doing nothing – just sitting and looking at the sea, or watching the wind blowing the tree limbs, or waves rippling on a pond, a flickering candle or children playing in the park? ~Ralph Marston

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Lichens: Seeing Small

We’ve had some warm weather here and that means that the snow is melting away from the stone walls. Since there are many miniature gardens growing on these old walls I thought I’d have a look.

Right off I was drawn to a boulder with patches of bright orange all over it. They turned out to be scattered rock posy lichens (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans); more than I had ever seen in a single grouping. The white pine needles in this shot will give you an idea of just how small these lichens are.

Observing the small size of lichens is a good way to get used to seeing the small and beautiful things in nature. If you want to see the magic in nature sometimes you have to stretch some, and that includes your eyes, so each year at about this time I start looking closely at lichens to get my eyes and mind back into “small mode.” I practice on lichens in the early spring so I don’t miss the tiny flowers, insects, fungi, slime molds, and other fascinating things that will come later on.

The fruiting bodies (apothecia) of these scattered rock posy lichens surprised me by looking like a mass of orange sausages.  Usually they are flat and disc shaped like the one in the upper left corner of this photo, and I’m assuming that this is what they look like before they take on the disc shape. Each disc shaped apothecia is about .04 inches (1mm) across.

If you’re interested in seeing small things in nature and have a ruler handy, you might want to look at it now so you can become familiar with just how small 1 millimeter really is. Finding things that size on a rock or tree can be a challenge, and that’s why I have to retrain my eyes to see them each spring. It isn’t just the eyes though; it’s also knowing where to look and knowing how to “think small,” but they come with experience.

Lichen identification can be tricky. I found what I believe is a rosy saucer lichen (Ochrolechia trochophora) growing on stone but the book Lichens of North America says that this lichen grows on tree bark. A little further research on the website Images of British Lichens shows that it grows on tree bark or stone. Based on that information and the fact that I can’t find a similar saucer lichen that grows in New England, I’m going with rosy saucer lichen. Even though it has rosy in its name its apothecia can range from pink to orange, according to what I’ve read.

I’m not sure how fast Cumberland rock shield lichens (Xanthoparmelia cumberlandia) grow but any lichen this big has to be very old. It must have been 10 inches across and there were several others that big nearby, so I think it’s safe to assume that these stones haven’t been disturbed in quite a long time. They were fruiting so they must be happy here.

Note: Canadian biologist Arold Lavoie has identified this lichen as a peppered rock shield (Xanthoparmelia conspersa). Arold pointed out that Cumberland rock shield doesn’t have any of the granular vegetative reproductive structures called isidium that can be seen on this lichen. Thanks very much for the help Arold.

This is a closer look at the fruiting bodies (apothecia) of the peppered rock shield lichen. They are fairly common and always seem to be folded or deformed looking. They are also always orangey-brown or dark brown in color.

I used to just pass by things that looked like white or gray crust on stones, but I stop and look a little closer now after finding things like this crater lichen (Diploschistes diacapsis). The lighter parts of this lichen make up its thick body (thallus) and the dark spots are its fruiting bodies (apothecia). Its common name comes from the way the apothecia sink into the thallus and look like tiny craters. Crater lichens prefer growing on calcareous stone and are a good indicator of limestone in the area. If you’re trying to find orchids or other plants that like lime laced soil, finding this lichen on the stones in the area you’re searching might lead you to them. I’ll be watching for it later on when I search for hepatica and spicebush.

Mealy firedot lichen (Caloplaca citrina) is a pretty little yellow to yellow-orange crustose lichen that likes to grow on wood or stone. The book Lichens of North America says that it is a very common lichen that rarely produces spores but this example seemed to be fruiting happily. The mealy part of its common name comes from the numerous granular soralia, which are used as a vegetative means of reproduction. They are meant to break off and start new lichens.

It could be that because mealy firedot lichens reproduce vegetatively they don’t feel the need to use energy in spore production but as this closeup view shows, this example was doing both. The tiny round objects that look like the suckers on an octopus are its fruiting bodies (apothecia). The shiny background in these photos happened because the stone was wet, so this lichen was getting plenty of water.

This is another kind of ‘ho hum’ white crusty lichen that doesn’t look very interesting until you get out your loupe or train your macro lens on it.

The ‘boring’ lichens have taught me that if something in nature doesn’t look worth bothering with it was only because I wasn’t really looking at it, because there isn’t a single piece of nature that isn’t beautiful or fascinating in some way. The fruiting bodies of this contorted rimmed lichen (Aspicilia contorta) were as tiny as a pencil dot on a piece of paper but they were there, and I’ve walked by them hundreds of times without stopping to see them. Finally noticing them wasn’t a life changing experience but such an alien landscape is very beautiful to me and I understand a little more about lichens than I did previously. Observing the beauty of nature and gaining knowledge are never a waste of time.

It seems that every time I do a post on lichens I have one or two that have me completely stumped, and this is today’s winner. Beyond knowing that it is a gray and yellow crustose lichen that was growing on granite, I know nothing about it. It’s another beautiful thing though, and eventually I’ll come across something similar in a book or on line that will get me started on the (sometimes long) trail to its identity.

I should say for those new to this blog that I am strictly an amateur at lichen identification. I don’t have a microscope, chemicals, or any of the other tools that lichenologists use but neither do I guess at lichen identities. I use the tools that I do have and often spend many long hours trying to identify these little beauties. Though I’m fairly confident of a lichen’s identity before I put it into a post, you should be aware of my limitations and should not bet the farm on what I believe it is. If you happen to be reading this and know of any mistakes I’ve made I’d be happy to have you correct them. When that happens we all benefit.

For lack of attention a thousand forms of loveliness elude us every day. ~Evelyn Underhill

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Time for a Climb

Last Saturday was relatively warm and sunny so I decided to go for a climb. I chose Pitcher Mountain in Stoddard because it is one of the few places in the area where you can find a place to park before you climb. Many haven’t been plowed.

I wasn’t sure if I’d make it without snowshoes but the trail looked to be good and packed down and even though the snow drifts were waist deep in places, I was able to get by with just gaiters and Yak Trax. It was slow going though and I had to stop frequently to catch my breath.

I noticed that deer and other animals had been using the snow packed trail too, and deer had been browsing the bushes and trees along the sides as this young maple shows.  The buds of some maples look a lot like oak buds but oaks have alternate branching. Since this tree has opposite branching it must be a maple.

Rabbits were using the packed snow trail too even though they were light enough to hop on top of the snow without sinking in.

It looked like the rabbits had been eating the bark off all of the staghorn sumacs. I wonder if that means that they’re having trouble finding food.

The snow was deep enough in places to make walking close to impossible if I had stepped off the packed trail. I decided that I didn’t want to wade through that much snow, so I stayed on it. I saw places where deer had stepped off the trail and sank into the soft snow probably up to their bellies. I felt bad for them-they must be having a very hard winter this year.  At least the snow isn’t crusty on top so it shouldn’t be cutting their legs all up.

When I reached what I call the meadow I saw why there were snow drifts along the trail; the wind had scoured parts of these pastures almost down to bare grass, blowing it all toward the trail. I keep hoping that I’ll see the Scottish highland cattle that wander these pastures, but I never have. They probably don’t want to wade through the deep snow either.

In the book Country Editor’s Boy Hal Borland speaks of the high plains of Colorado, and how when he was a boy there was an unbroken view to the horizon in any direction. There wasn’t a tree or hill or building to add any interest, he said, and I wondered as I stopped and saw this view if this is what it was like. For someone like me who lives in a forest, seeing a view like this is like seeing the surface of another planet. I’m not sure how long I could stand it.

 

The fire tower hasn’t blown off the mountain yet. Since I learned that this tower was built as a replacement for the original 1915 wooden tower that burned down in April of 1940 in the most destructive forest fire that this area has ever seen, I see it as a kind of monument to irony.

You could see that plenty of wind had blown through here but on this day there was only a slight breeze, so it wasn’t too bad. It could have been much worse.

After all the snow we’ve had this year I thought the fire warden’s cabin would be either flattened or buried but it looked as if someone had shoveled it out and had been shoveling the roof as well. Now that’s a job that I wouldn’t want, no matter what it paid.

 

For a change it wasn’t hazy at all and the views were good. Mount Monadnock was clearly visible over the meadow to the right.

I don’t know the name of this hill but I wish I did because it’s a beauty. Someday I’m going to have to get a topographical map of this area and earn the names of all of these hills.

 

The sun and wind had done their work on the many rocks found on the summit so there were plenty of lichens to see. The yellow orange ones are common gold speck lichen (Candelariella vitellina) and the black and white ones are tile lichens tile lichens (Lecidea tessellate.)

The biggest surprise of the day was this scattered rock posy lichen (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans.) For years I knew of one nickel sized example and then last year I found another and then another, and now I seem to be seeing them everywhere.

The going was much slipperier and tougher on the way down than it had been on the way up and I wished that I could just curl into a ball and roll down the mountain side. By the time I reached the bottom I knew that I wasn’t going to be good for much of anything else that day, and I was glad that I had nothing left to do.

Perhaps there’s no better act of simplification than climbing a mountain. For an afternoon, a day, or a week, it’s a way of reducing a complicated life into a simple goal. All you have to do is take one step at a time, place one foot in front of the other, and refuse to turn back until you’ve given everything you have. ~Ken Ilgunas

Thanks for stopping in. Don’t forget to turn the clocks one hour ahead tonight!

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Lichens

 

If you visit a place or places day after day, year after year, you get to know what grows in those places, and that is how I have come to know so many lichens-because I visit them regularly. At this time of year people often think that once the leaves fall there isn’t anything colorful left to see, but that simply isn’t true.  Lichens like the common goldspeck lichen (Candelariella vitellina) in the above photo are here year round for us to enjoy, and once the leaves fall many lichens become even easier to see. Look for this crustose lichen on stone. Crustose lichens form crusts that tightly adhere to the substrate that they grow on and can’t be removed without damaging it.

Bubblegum lichen (Icmadophila ericetorum) gets its name from its bright, bubblegum pink fruiting bodies (apothecia.) I find this crustose lichen growing in large patches on acid, sandy soil in full sun along with blueberries and sweet fern.  It is uncommon and I knew of only two places where it grew. One of those places has been destroyed by logging however, so now there is only one place I know of to find it.

Note: Bob Klips has identified this lichen as Dibaeis baeomyces rather than Icmadophila ericetorum. One of the differences between the two is the length of the stalks that the apothecia sit on. They are longer on Icmadophila ericetorum than they are on Dibaeis baeomyces. Thank you Bob, for the help! If you haven’t visited Bob blog, “Bob’s Brain on Botany,” you should. It’s a real treat and you can find it at bobklips.com

Script lichen looks just like its name suggests but it is a very ancient script, like long forgotten runes. This is another crustose lichen but I find it growing on tree bark rather than stone or soil. The dark “script” characters are its fruiting bodies. There are many script lichen species and each seems to prefer a certain species of tree. I think this example is the common script lichen (Graphis scripta) which prefers smooth barked trees like maple.

One of my favorite lichens is the poplar sunburst lichen ((Xanthoria hasseana). Its fruiting bodies are disc like structures that remind me of orange octopus suckers. This seems to be a perpetually fruiting lichen which hasn’t stopped since I found it about two years ago. It has grown though, and now a little bigger than a quarter.  I think it is one of our more beautiful lichens found in this area. This is a foliose lichen that grows on tree bark, but I’ve never found it on a poplar. Foliose lichens are lobed and leaf like.

Pixie cup lichens (Cladonia pyxidata) look like tiny golf tees or trumpets, and they are also called trumpet lichens. They are common and I almost always find them growing on the sides of rotting tree stumps, often with British soldier and common powder horn lichens (Cladonia coniocraea.) Common powder horn is, curiously, not horn shaped. They are the taller structures in this photo. Pixie cups are squamulose lichens, which means they are scaly, but they are also foliose, or leafy.

When I first found this beautiful little scattered rock posy lichen (Rhizoplaca subdiscrepans) a few years ago it could have sat on a penny with room to spare, but now it has reached quarter size. The orange pad shaped parts are its fruiting bodies (Apothecia,) and the grayish, brain like part is the body (thallus) of this relatively uncommon foliose lichen. By measuring the rate of growth of lichens scientists can get a fairly accurate estimate of how old the rocks are that the lichens grow on. This is known as lichenometry.

Smokey eye boulder lichen is another favorite of mine. The blue color seen in the above photo is caused by the way light reflects off a waxy coating on the fruiting bodies, which is very similar to the “bloom” found on plums, blueberries, and grapes. In addition to blue it can also appear black or gray depending on which direction the light happens to be coming from.  The greenish-gold background color is the color of the body (thallus) of this crustose lichen.

Crustose rock disk lichens (Lecidella stigmatea) look a lot like tile lichens (Lecidea tessellate,) but tile lichens have black fruiting bodies that are sunken, or concave, and rock disk lichens have black fruiting bodies that are raised or flat. These lichens are very common on rocks of all kinds and grow in full sun.

Granite firedot lichens (Caloplaca arenaria) have a gray body (Thallus) and dark orange fruiting bodies (Apothecia,) but the fruiting bodies are so crowded that it’s often hard to see the gray thallus. This is another crustose lichen that doesn’t mind growing on granite in full sun.

Golden moonglow lichens (Dimelaena oreina) can get quite big but I usually find them at dime to quarter size. They grow in groups in full sun on granite and often grow quite close together. The examples in the above photo were fruiting, and that is something I don’t see them do very often. Their apothecia are the dark, cup shaped bodies in the centers of the examples shown. I’ve never been able to find out why so many lichens seem to release their spores so late in the year.

 

I showed toadskin lichen (Lasallia papulosa) in a recent post and quite a few people seemed interested in it, so I thought I’d show it again here and go into a little more detail.  This lichen is very similar to rock tripe lichen (Umbilicaria mammulata) and if it wasn’t for all of the warts it would look very much like it.  The warts are called pustules and on the back of the lichen there is a corresponding pit for every pustule. When wet the greenish color of the algae that is present comes through on the surface. The black dots are its fruiting bodies. Each lichen is attached to the rock at a single point that looks much like a belly button, so this is an umbilicate lichen.

When wet toadskin lichens are rubbery and pliable and feel much like your ear lobe but when they dry out they are much like a potato chip, and will crack just as easily.  Like many lichens they also change color when they dry out, and turn kind of ashy gray like the example in the above photo. Toadskin lichens are also some of the hardest to find-I’ve only seen them growing on hilltop boulders.

However since most lichens grow on trees, soil, rocks, stumps and logs they’re virtually everywhere you go. Many are quite small though, so you have to walk slowly and look closely to find them. Once you’ve seen a few you’ll start seeing them almost everywhere you go. I know of a few that grow on trees right in the heart of downtown Keene.

The trees are coming into their winter bareness; the only green is the lichen on their branches.
~Verlyn Klinkenborg

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