#lichen asks

[liches-covered-in-lich]

could you please tag triggers as just the trigger without "cw: " before? like just "flashing" instead of "cw: flashing". unless I have every version possible of a trigger tag blocked (most people just tag flashing or tw flashing, cw flashing, but occasionally people do flashing / or tw: flashing /, which are very specific tags) it's not very helpful. genuinely just asking, and thanks for tagging things

Yea sure np

[liches-covered-in-lich]

What are your favourite Soulsborne enemy types? 🫵👀

Oh man..probably the "first" hard enemy type. Like the Lothric Knights from ds3. The horse-riding knights from Elden Ring. The Black Knights from ds1.

There's something about learning how to work around them that's just so good

[liches-covered-in-lich]

favorite word?

Alas as I use it all the time for the most mundane of situations. Or hooligan as its fun to say. Maybe even vindictive for the same reason

[lichenaday]

I'm starting to study Botany and have only just realized how cool lichens are( I always thought they were pretty but they have 3 SPECIES at least in them??!! (Right?)) but I want to study them more do you have any recommendations for books or video essays on these lil guys? If not thanks for reading and may your winds be at ease!

The integral components of a lichen are a mycobiont (the fungal partner) and the photobiont (a green algae and/or cyanobacteria). Most lichens are an ascomycete fungi+green algae, some are ascomycete+cyanobacreria, even fewer are ascomycete+green algae+cyanobacteria, and even fewer still are basidiomycete fungi+green algae, and even even fewer are basidomycete+cyanobacteria. So it depends on the lichen. ALL THAT BEING SAID: lichens also host other fungi, algae, and bacteria, but to what extent they are integral to the lichen symbiosis is still being elucidated. They're a tiny little ecosystem! I learned about lichens the old fashioned way (taking a class), and don't read/watch a lot of pop-sci content. I mostly read boring ol' journal articles. But The Lives of Lichens: A Natural History by Lücking and Spribille has got to be pretty good, considering the authors are top of the field. The British Lichen Society website is a great resource for lichen content, and they have a book list as well. May the hair on your toes never fall out.

[lichenaday]

I am doing a group project at uni about lichenometry, and i wondered whether you might happen to know any good papers/resources about the topic? Pubmed is turning up very few results (should i even be using pubmed for this?)

I usually use google scholar for my lit searches, but that's just me. Lichenometry is a tricky subject and its efficacy has come into question in recent times. I pulled up some papers on it for some students who were curious about it earlier this year: Limits to lichenometry

Modeling Uncertainties in Lichenometry Studies

Functional Traits in Lichen Ecology: A Review of Challenge and Opportunity I don't know enough about it to have a strong opinion beyond that lichens are tricky bastards and wouldn't trust them to tell me anything exact. Good luck on your project! Remember that talking about the flaws in a methodology can be just as interesting as talking about its potential benefits.

[liches-covered-in-lich]

Send this to all your favourite moots and pass the pumpkin round! KEEP THE PUMPKIN TRAIN GOING 🎃🖤🎃🖤🎃

:D!!! Why thanks!

[lichenaday]

Can lichen be farmed? With the scale and uniformity required for supermarket sales, I’d think there’s commercial production involved. (Also, did you meet Borat?)

No lichens can't be farmed, though there are some species like Evernia prunastri that will commonly grow in orchards and are commercially harvested, so kind a win win? But lichens are too slow rowing and sensitive to be farmed. That's why lichens are just not a commercially viable product. The only way to collect them is from the wild, so it's lucky that they aren't particularly delicious or else humans could very easily deplete wild populations as they did while harvesting them for purple dye back in the day. And I did not meet Borat in Kazakhstan, and I am pretty sure if I had mentioned him I would have been met with icy stares all around. Kazakh people are understandably not too fond of those movies . . .

[lichenaday]

I got a question

I got a lichen on a querqus tree, i think its in the genus Flavoparmelia. Now i read in the new book to identify whit the,,Flechtenstoff“ ago also known as lichen acids. So its not longer possible to identify this group with macroscopic and chemicals?

In this moment i got only (KOH) the flesh is K- and the skin is K+ yellow

It looks more like a regular ol' Parmelia rather than a Flavoparmelia based on the color (Flavoparmelias tend to be more yellow-green due to the presence of usnic acid), but that may be because of the lighting or image exposure or whatever. I don't know enough about this group to know for sure what is needed to ID them, but I think I have always done it morphologically/chemically. I use this Italian key for a lot of my foliose lichen ID: https://italic.units.it/flora/index.php?procedure=ext_key_home&key_id=8715