r/Lichen

This lichen/moss (?) has been growing on our fence for the past couple of years, mostly because it's been too cool looking to remove. I know this won't last forever, but wondering if anyone has any craft experience or ideas for this. I just want to put a village of tiny fairies living among it, but that only compounds, not solves my fence problem.

Been thinking about trying to scrape some off and embed it in resin, but I have no idea if it would survive the move. Thoughts anyone?

100% wool yarn, natural/ecru, no mordant (lichen is a substantive dye). Cameo by indigo fingers 😅

I've done this at 10% WOF before and got a pretty OK tan, kind of a paper bag color. Who knew this was hiding in the higher percentages??

Denmark 🇩🇰

I’ve been getting into lichens recently and took these photos around Buenos Aires using a 30× magnifying glass over my phone camera.

It’s pretty amazing how much detail becomes visible at this scale. I especially liked the textures and all the apothecia on some of these.

Just wanted to share a few of my recent finds. Still learning my way around lichens, but I’m having a lot of fun looking at them up close.

Whilst experimenting with different applications for setting lichens onto a surface. I've built a limestone stone wall for my garden (now 5 years old) and have been dabbling with accelerated ageing ever since I had some success using recycled low fired clay bricks rebuilding a wall in the UK. I'm now in Australia, which is a pretty tough environment for lichens. I've tried various beer methods, the many yoghurt methods, the chicken dung method, only with relative success....until now.

This may seem strange and a witches brew, but humour me, Xanthoparmelia, Xanthoria and Caloplaca, love this.

For the base...

2 cups of hot (90 deg C) rainwater

1/2 tsp Agar powder. (growing medium)

1/2 tsp of Xanthan gum powder (complex sugars and a hardener for the Agar)

1/2 tsp of liquid seaweed fertiliser. (all sorts of 'starter' enzymes, proteins, sugars and beneficial nutrients in that)

Mix the powders and fertiliser in the hot water until it resembles wallpaper paste.

For the top coat...

1 cup of scrapings of your lichen plus any base adhesion.

1/2 cup of roof gutter sludge. Yes, that's right, that's probably where the Basidiomycete yeasts live. The Third Element.

Liquidise both together (with rainwater if needed) for about 5 seconds until you have a lumpy sludge, retaining some fragments of lichen.

Method.

Slap on a thick basecoat of the 'wallpaper paste' slurry with a thick brush to your substrate (preferably porous and pH neutral). Allow to soak in.

Then slap on the lichen sludge by stippling with the brush.

Cover and allow to dry until set.

Once dry and a crust has formed, heavily mist spray with rainwater every day it doesn't rain.

You should see some decent growth (a couple of millimeters!) within a year.

I was lucky enough to get a couple of barrowloads of lichen off an old corrugated cement roof, and upsized production with a cement mixer to cover this wall.

Results here here after 5 years. (right click and open image in new tab for closeup).

There's a combination of limestone, slate and serpentine in this wall. Lichen hates serpentine, possibly because it is has a high metal oxide content like iron,magnesium, zinc and copper, similar to basalt iron/magnesium based rock which is also not great for lichens.

For those interested, the plant background is Field Maple, Red Valerian, and Ground Ivy.

I’m looking for some help identifying two different lichen species I encountered today on stone walls just south of Boston, MA. The first is a crustose little guy, close up of a piece that has flaked off the wall.

The second, the foliose one, I THINK is common greenshield (flavoparmelia baltimorensis or whatever the f. caperata equivalent on stone is, I’m better with lichen on wood), but I’ve never seen such prominent dark apothecia or that odd powdery texture.

Pretty branch from the UK as a thanks for looking!!

Germany, Lower Saxony

Germany, Lower Saxony

Found on the same tree, possibly a willow. NSW Australia.

Germany, Lower Saxony

Location: Over the mountain east of Alma, Colorado on Beaver Creek approx 9900ft. Also is the Lichen next to the cups also part of the same organisms?

Maybe more visible with this link: https://flickr.com/photos/201089689@N03/53887040743/in/album-72177720332604366/lightbox/

Denmark 🇩🇰

Just learning to ID lichen, apparently this is edible?