Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Lichen


A wise man once told me, "Freddie Fungus met Alice Algae and took a Lichen to her."

As a lover of English cottages, I realize that one desireable feature is lichen. I gives a mellow aged look to roofs and walls. When we remodeled this house, I faux painted some lichen-ish stuff on the window and door mouldings. But now I actually have some real lichen on the lamp out front. And I'm lichen it a lot. You can find more lichens here.

5 comments:

Anonymous said...

I'm glad to know that someone else likes lichens.

I love moss in trees, too.

Spot said...

finger lichen good?

Spot said...

Hi Laura, there are already several boring photos of lichen on my blog,not much else grows round here in the rain, and we don't have any exciting stick insects or preying mantis(es) to snap or eat. No one says lickin' for liken over here not even the good Colonel himself, but some do say litchen, and no-one knows which is right!

Martha said...

I'm a-lichen it too ;)

Gillian said...

That orangey yellow stuff is probably xanthoria parietina. It looks like some one has splashed paint around and the "xanthe" bit comes from the ancient greek for golden and the oria comes from the latin for gold. It's as if they wanted to make sure it had been correctly named!
The greeny grey stuff could be any of about 20,000 types of lichen. It takes a jewellers loupe/hand lens to be sure.

Glad you have some. It can take years to cultivate because it is so slow growing.
Cheers
Gillian