I Like 'Em

While traipsing around the woods behind my house this past weekend with the macro lens, I stumbled across the most interesting little plants. I say stumbled because I literally tripped on a vine and grabbed a branch to keep it from whacking me in the head. The branch was attached to a tree that was covered in lichens, and I thought visually they were very intriguing.

Which prompted me to read up on them a little. And that prompted me to share my new found information with you. Because that’s what bloggers do, they share. And share some more. Until they’ve over-shared. So here you go, ten things you may or may not know about lichens.

1. They come in many colors. Most of the yellow ones are poisonous.

2. The form of a lichen is determined by the genetic material of its fungal partner. Sounds a lot like marriage to me.

3. Some lichens are gelatinous. To which I say, “Eww”.

4. Most are asexual. Calm down, Sean Hannity, they don’t want to get married.

5. That makes me wonder what I’m looking at here.

6. Lichens are often the first to settle in places without soil, making up the sole vegetation in some extreme environments such as high mountain elevations. Some survive in deserts and others on frozen soil of the Arctic.

7. The European Science Agency has discovered that lichens can survive unprotected in space.

8. There is an ongoing lichen growth problem on Mount Rushmore that requires the employment of mountain climbers to clean the monument. Does that mean somebody regularly picks Thomas Jefferson’s nose?

9. Different kinds of lichens are sometimes eaten. In northern Europe they’ve been cooked as a bread, porridge, pudding, soup, or salad. Northern peoples in North America and Siberia traditionally eat the partially digested Reindeer Lichen after they remove it from the pouch of caribou or reindeer that have been killed. I don’t want to eat anything found in an animal’s pouch.

10. The hair on these lichens makes me laugh like a middle schooler.