Lichens

On Saturday, we went to Nature Fest at the Jesse H. Jones State Park. I was so excited to see a display about lichens, since we'd found several last week and had become interested in them.

One of the things I'd read online about lichens was that they can be used to make dye. The park had a craft table with various things made into dyes - onions, black walnuts, some kind of flower, and lichens!!! How cool is that? I asked how they made it, but the girls at the station were just helping with the craft and hadn't helped make the dyes.

I'd also read online that there were 3 main kinds of lichen. The display actually had samples of all three! FRUTICOSE are wiry and bush like.

FOLIOSE are abover the bark and leaf like.

And CRUSTOSE are part of the bark - crusty.

This is the sample Alexandra had found - it is very much like the foliose samples on their displays.

I think this must be foliose, too - it is not hairy or crustlike and looks more like leaves.

And, I think this must be foliose, too, for the same reasons.

They also had a few posters teaching about lichens. Part of the poster above says: LICHENS are symbiotic relationships between members of up to 3 kingdoms: fungi, algae, and blue-green algae. The dominant partner is fungus.

Fungi are incapable of making their own food. And algae produce food and energy through photosynthesis. The fungus surrounds the algae, protecting it from drying out, and lives off the food it provides.

Lichens do not flower, instead the produce spores.

Lichens are the most dominant and often overlooked vegetation.

This poster has the more interesting facts:

LICHENS are eaten by squirrels and deer.

LICHENS are used by flying squirrels as nest material first and then eaten during winter. (Eat your house - cool!)

LICHENS are used by hummingbirds, wood pewees and blue-gray gnatcatchers for nest material.

LICHENS are inhabited by lichen moth larvae and waterbears.

LICHENS are utilized by American indians as dye stuff for leather and textiles.

LICHENS are anazlyzed by biochemists to isolate disease-fighting compounds.

LICHENS are useful as air pollution indicators.

LICHENS make good soup (some).