That in Aleppo Once

Rereading "Spring in Fialta" by Vladimir Nabokov, I enjoy the short stories that I read at least once before, since I started reading Nabokov in 1975.
The copy of the paperback that I'm reading is from 1951, it cost 35 cents at the time and every page that I turn breaks off. So I am also the last person to read this particular copy, reading it is destroying it.
In the story that I just finished, "That in Aleppo Once", I come across a reference to lichens. The lichen in the story is as unobtrusive as they are in real life, very easy to miss if you are not looking:

"Viewing the past graphically, I see our mangled romance engulfed in a deep valley of mist between the crags of two matter-of-fact mountains: life had been real before, life will be real from now on, I hope. Not tomorrow, though. Perhaps after tomorrow. You, happy mortal, with your lovely family (How is Ines? How are the twins?), and your diversified work (how are the lichens?), can hardly be expected to puzzle out my misfortune in terms of human communion, but you may clarify things for me through the prism of your art."

Last week I stepped back into the lichen world, as I joined a group on a lichen tour here in Amsterdam. The tour would take nearly two hours so I wore my hiking shoes, but all in all we barely covered 300 meters. Right at the start already, a rare lichen was discovered on the meeting place, a tiny spot on a square. I borrowed a small magnifying glass from our guide and bent over, kneeled, and pressed my nose to the ground, to walls and trees nearby. And I took a few pictures of my fellow lichen-fans.

Lichens in Athens

Hiking along a steep path steeply on the Lykavittos hill in Athens, I found a rock with some lichens. Getting close up to them made me feel closer to home. I admire their ability to find spots no other plant wants to claim, so they aren't threatened and they can have a very long lifetime partly because they need very little to live.

Rijksbinnenhaven III

Parmelia sulcata

On trees alongside the Arnhem-Nijmegen freeway in Arnhem across the Gelredome stadium. I've enjoyed trying to determine this one with the CTMS method, i.e. Compare The Mug Shots, with the books I recently acquired. Kenny Dorham jazz music on the stereo, and leafing slowly, amazed by all the pictures and specs. I first assumed this to be Parmelia saxatilis but visitor Xanthoria says it's P. sulcata and I'm sure he knows better! Thanks!

Cladonia fimbriata

My good friend Robert sends me a few pictures he and his wife took along a path in north west Germany, the Waldlehr- und Erlebnispfad Dwergter Sand in the region of Oldenburger Münsterland near the city of Molbergen.

The fantastic lichen he found for me has a purple hue. A theatrical lichen. Laurens Sparrius explains this hue is caused by a fungus crest.

It's Cladonia fimbriata, Kopjes-vingermos.

Physcia aipolia?

The parents of Corrie Jetten have buried their beloved child Corrie here. Some putty has been applied to crudely patch up a crack in the vertical beam of the cross. On the left shoulder of the crucifix, a patch of pale lichen rests.

It closely resembles Physcia aipolia... it's just that the inside of the apothecia is the same very pale light-jade green as the prothallus, instead of black. It might still be, as Dobson mentions this colour can also be white-pruinose. Also: "rarely on nutrient-enriched walls and rocks. Now returning to many areas as pollution levels drop."

Redgrave

One of the graves hosts a priest, joined by his brother and his wife (the brother's wife, that is, not the priest's wife). The slabs with inscriptions are kept immaculate but the stone lining of the simple grave has been ornamented by lichens. I'm unsure what species this is. Rusty red, it resembles some Caloplaca.

Saint Salvius, Limbricht graveyard

The old church of Limbricht is very old. On a site about old churches in the province of Limburg I read: "A little outside the village of Limbricht, close to the castle, is where the old church stands. It was closed when the new church elsewhere in the village (building commenced in 1922) was opened. The old church is two aisles wide. Both aisles are about equally high and wide. The oldest part of the church is the northern aisle, especially the lower half of the northern wall, which dates from the 11th century and consists of stones from the river Maas. The choir has a few fragments from the same century, but is largely from ca. 1250 and in late-Romanesque style. Inside are some murals from the period, which are probably the oldest in The Netherlands. The tower was built around 1458 and it stood next to the church at the time. In the first quarter of the 16th century the southern aisle was added and the facade renewed. In 1651 both aisles were heightened and provided with stepped gables at the east end. In 1953-1954 F.P.J. Peutz restored the church and removed sacristy and portal which had been added more recently."
I visited the graveyard and found some lichens which I will show in separate entries.

Cladonia macilenta?

In Limbricht (Lömmerich in the language of the region) I visited Wil Meijs, a very friendly man specialized in books about nature. Just yesterday, a new encyclopedic book about butterflies came out and he recieved a stack of them for his customers. In stock he has thousands of books, and he allowed me to browse through the collection. He told me that some specialized sets of books stay with him for a long time until he finds the person who just happens to need these. I was impressed by a richly illustrated study about the many subspecies of a certain parasitic flower without roots or leaves -- it lives off another plant's facilities. Books about bats, about birds and even about crickets, with a CD to study the sounds of the different species of crickets. And books about mushrooms. He told me that mycologists are having the time of their life these days, with more species popping up than ever before a a result of the exceptional weather this late summer. They gather as much observation and material as they can to process later -- as soon as the cold sets in, most mushrooms disappear...

I bought a book about the trees of Europe, so I can learn to name the tress I find lichens on. I also chose a booklet with a standard listing of the Dutch lichens and an illustrated paperback of almost 500 pages, Lichens, An Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species by Frank S. Dobson. A German book of reference in two volumes, nearly a thousand pages in all, is on backorder for me.

Then I went looking for the old parts of the little town, hoping to bring back some pictures of lichen from this trip.


First I went for the church tower, a promising landmark. This church isn't as old as it seems, or it's been kept so clean there's no lichen to be found there. But luckily, a low wall around the back of the church grounds looks like it's been in neglect for dozens of years. Very good news.



Lots of moss and plenty of lichen. In the corner of the wall I may have found Cladonia macilenta. Comparing the Dobson book with the Dutch field guide by Kok van Herk and André Aptroot helped me arrive at this best guess.

The Local Lecanora?

On the same trees where I found many Xanthoria today, I also saw a lichen with an oval thallus that's white, powdery, so thin it's just a hint of background from a distance.

Checking the field guide, I don't find a visual match. Some Lecanora almost resemble.

The Xanthoria Next Door

This week it struck me that practically all trees along the main street meandering through my neighbourhood have their stem covered with lichen. How come I never saw this before? Does it prove that it's possible to cover part of this neighbourhood with signs that no one ever sees, unless by accident?

I went out to take pictures. This time I made three little series, zooming in on the lichen, so it becomes clear what it grows on and what size it is before I come closer. Two on a tree and one on a post.

The Xanthoria parietina (Groot dooiermos) is very common. I've pictured one already but made this series to portray 'the girl next door' and show how pretty she is in the right light.
























PS: here's one that Claudia Hahler sent me. She made this picture last year in Germany:

Lichens don't lie

Tobias Reijngoud writes me that he briefly studied lichens ten years ago during his years at Utrecht University (Fysische Geografie). Lichens were used to estimate the age of monuments they were found on. One of the teachers was a lichen enthusiast. This teacher's college notes title was Lichens don't lie...

I looked but didn't find reference to these college notes online. I did find an article with the same title on the site of the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh:

"Cleaner air? Lichens don't lie...

27 May 2004

A rare lichen last seen in Edinburgh in 1797 has made its reappearance in the Garden at Inverleith. RBGE’s resident lichenologists Brian Coppins and Chris Ellis were examining the lichens growing on deciduous rhododendrons in the Azalea lawn when they discovered the gristle lichen, Ramalina fraxinea, attached to a rhododendron stem.

The gristle lichen has declined, sometimes to local extinction, in many parts of Britain due to high levels of sulphur dioxide air pollution prevailing since the Industrial Revolution. It is thought that rigorous and effective measures to reduce air pollution in the last decades have allowed lichens such as this to return to areas where they had previously died off.

The specimen found consisted of several rigid, strap-like lobes, the largest being 8cm long. Under ideal conditions, such as parkland trees in the north east of Scotland, this lichen can attain an impressive length of 30cm."





And another on the site of the French Office of Science and Technology:

Lichens don't lie
proof of nuclear site leakage

Who would you be more willing to believe, France's Atomic Energy Commission or a handful of rootless rock-dwellers? A report published in the Journal of Atmospheric Chemistry has sided with the latter, after several years studying lichen from the area surrounding the CEA's site near Dijon in northern Burgundy, where the CEA's military branch assembles and dismantles hydrogen bombs. The Valduc site has always claimed to be a model of nuclear cleanliness, but when the CEA in a fit of transparence established an independent association of local officials and scientists to verify these claims, the truth as told by local flora turned out to be other. The sample collection campaign was headed by an amateur mycologist who had won previous distinction by being the first to show – in 1986 – that radioactive air masses from Chernobyl had not magically stopped at the French border (as official utterance would have had it), basing his conclusions on spikes of radioactivity in mushrooms. Results from the lichen samples (having no roots, a lichen absorbs its water from the air, making it a particularly good litmus for atmospheric molecules) showed levels of tritium – the main isotope of hydrogen emitted at Valduc – to be 1000 times higher than normal in the immediate surroundings of the site, 100 times greater four kilometers away in the direction of the prevailing wind, and 10 times greater at 40 kilometers from the site. In response to CEA efforts to typify the local lichen as especially tritium-hungry, an independent group of mycologists carried out similar studies in other nuclear sites, like La Haye, with similar results. One final aspect of the watchdog findings, which requires substantiation, is the results from transplanting Valduc area lichen to non-nuclear regions; the mycologists found that the plant loses half its radioactivity in a year. Working backwards this would put Valduc tritium concentrations twenty years ago at exorbitant levels. (Libération, December 3, p11, Nicolas Chevassus-au-Louis)"

I rarely check my gmail and then when I do there's usually something surprising. This is one incoming:

Dear Frans --

I'm researching a possible documentary on the dangers to the mixed mesophytic forest along the Cumberland Plateau in the USA, especially in the state of Tennessee, home of the Tennessee Valley Authority and its involvement in the nuclear fuel and bomb cycles.

I noticed on your blog the posts "Lichens don't lie," particularly the one about Chernobyl fallout. I've also recently posted the following on an anti-DU list serve where arguments that fungi clean up nuclear contamination were sharply disputed:

"Fungi and alga intertwine to form lichens, which absorb strontium 90 and cesium 137 from the air -- lichens ingested by wildlife move into the food chain ... I'm citing "The Firecracker Boys: H-Bombs, Inupiat Eskimos, and the Roots of the Environmental Movement" (mainly about Edward Teller's effort to nuke a harbor at Point Hope in northwest Alaska while he was at Lawrence Radiology, part of LLNL, and the reaction to that) -- by Dan O'Neill -- this book was suggested by my nephew, who is an Alaskan wildlife biologist.

"Excerpts from pages 227-228:

"In the late 1950s and early 1960s, biologists were examining a puzzling phenomenon. Air currents in the stratosphere deposited fallout mostly in the Northern Hemisphere's Temperate Zone [where levels were] 10 times higher than levels measured on the ground in Arctic regions. But for some unknown reason, the level of strontium 90 showing up in Alaska caribou were many times higher than that in domestic animals in the lower states [25 micromicrocuries of Sr90 per gram of calcium in domestic animal bones vs. 100-200 strontium units in bones and antlers of caribou, and in the stomach, 200 units. vs. 1,264] ... Further, the caribou, and the Eskimos who ate the caribou, appeared to be higher in Sr90 than any other group in the world ...

"[The scientists, including Barry Commoner] focused on the unique biology of the caribou's major food, lichens ...

"... Lichens are the ideal organism to capture fallout ... lichens are rootless and derive their water and their mineral nutrition from the air ... When the caribou grazed on the lichens, their principal winter food, they gleaned the fallout from many acres and stored it into their tissues and bones. As Eskimos ate the caribou, they further concentrated into their bodies the radioactive strontium and cesium that were dispersed over miles of tundra ... and because Eskimo villages such as Point Hope might consume 100,000 pounds of caribou meat annually, the radioactive contamination was amplified at each successive level of the food chain ..."

I'm not sure where to take this, but it seems evident that one of the key clues to the presence of nuclear contamination of forests (including the Pletkau effect) would be lichens -- contamination from any aspect of the nuclear fuel and weapons cycles -- Perhaps you have thoughts this way, or suggestions on directions.

Below is me, our web site, and the link to opening scenes from a just-completed film, "Contaminated Forever." There's also a "who we are" link on the home page of Wild Clearing.

Best,

Wes Rehberg

Wes Rehberg

Wild Clearing

http://www.wildclearing.com

http://www.contaminatedforever.com

From the Clearing blog ...

http://weblog.rehberg.net

skype: wildclearing

Groot dooiermos

The last one on the Bentheim wall. Xanthoria parietina. Thanks to Laurens Sparrius for pointing out the name.

Kroezig dooiermos

Another Burg Bentheim find and probably another very common lichen on this gigantically protruding building. Xanthoria calendaria. I regret that I haven't measured its size though. Maybe I should have a small metal ruler with me to hold next to a lichen, making determination from pictures a little easier later on.

Caloplaca flavescens

Also on the walls of Burg Bentheim. Great view from the high walls built on the already tall rock rising from the city. I guessed this to be Caloplaca citrina. Laurens Sparrius points out it's Caloplaca flavescens (Gelobde citroenkorst), also a very common lichen.

Burg Strontjesmos?

On the walls of the Burg Bentheim castle high on top of the German city Bad Bentheim. It looks like one that Matthieu van Wieringen finds hard to determine. His specimen is colored along the rim.

This lichen is pushing the wonderful idea of being unobtrusive so far as to be practically nondescript! Which nameless lichenologist has named this one? It could have been Verrucaria maura but it's light grey instead of black and I found it high inland instead of low on shoreside rocks near the sea. The description of Buellia aethalea (Steenstrontjesmos) almost fits but then the rim (prothallus) would have to be black. The ecology matches though: megaliths, gravestones, walls of churces and fortifications. Just the thing for the Bentheim vista.

After visiting a number of castles, I get the impression that at least some of the inhabitants were rather bourgeous. The Bentheim castle had a library that intentionally evoked the concept of being very old and archetypical German with its gothic design, but in fact the furniture and decorations were built when the industrial revolution was happening full speed, and the nobility was beginning to feel awkwardly superfluous, nostalgically trying to build their homes back into a past that never was. In the same castle, I saw the usual oil paintings of ancestors, but they looked dull and cheap. They turned out to be a gift from our Dutch queen who had these copied from illustrious originals, to help decorate the place to show status and historic chic. Hunting, dining, drinking and making an impression. In another castle I saw two oil paintings depicting Parsifal on his horse, at nightfall, in awe at finding the dark castle of his opponent Klingsor. If they'd had tv, I bet they'd have watched reruns of Ivanhoe with the youthful Roger Moore escaping their dungeons again and again.

Physcia caesia

On a wall near a parking lot close to the entrance of the open air theatre
of the pretty town of Tecklenburg, Germany. A very common lichen. Mainly elderly people crowd the touristic beauty of this old town on a hill. The regular visitors of the open air theatre carry thermos bottles, food, seat cushions and blankets into the site of the old castle ruin where the stage has been built for Les miserables and other hits of the musical theatre.

Stoeprandvingermos

Eyelashes on a wall

On a rocky wall along the shore of the Diemelsee lake, close to the Talsperre flood-control dam. The description that I found of Anaptychia ciliaris seemed to match, except that this Wimpermos (Eyelash moss) is supposed to be very rare, and growing on trees, on spots were they date back to the 19th century... Puzzling. But pleasantly so. And humbling. I felt as if I'm cheating through an exam, looking up stuff in books but still not sure if I got it right.

Luckily Laurens Sparrius helps out: it's Peltigera hymenina, a rare lichen, mostly to be found on the northern (West-) Friesian islands of the Netherlands, and only sporadically inland. So it's a special find.

Schildmos

Same location as the 'red trunk lips' posting earlier today. I think it could be Punctelia subrudecta, the Dutch Gestippeld schildmos it's just that the thallus is more green than the metallic grey I read about for the Punctelia subrudecta...

Kopjes-bekermos

This one also in the Diemelsee region, on a log with lots of moss, moist environment, not much light. I had no idea what name, but Laurens Sparrius helped out again: it's Cladonia fimbriata.

Hypogymnia physodes

On a large dead tree rotting away in the quiet forest along the Diemelsteig hiking track near Heringhausen, Germany. This is Hypogymnia physodes, in Dutch Gewoon schorsmos.

I also found a nice compact spot of what I assume is the same Hypogymnia, on a dry old wooden post along a path nearby, in open landscape, the path downhill cutting through pastures.

Parmelia sulcata

On a hiking track in the Diemelsee region, near the village of Heringhausen. (Parmelia sulcata). Groot schildmos

Cladonia fimbriata

Low, near the soil on the sunny side of a tree on a vista overlooking the Diemelsee valley. I concluded it's a Cladonia, but was unsure about the subspecies, it's almost similar to Cladonia caespiticia, in Dutch Greppelblaadje.

Laurens Sparrius pointed out in his astute comments that it's another specimen of Cladonia fimbriata, in Dutch Kopjes-bekermos

Muurschotelkorst

On a gravestone in Korbach. I wish I'd first taken a picture of the uninteresting little green patch this seemed to the naked eye, just under 2cm in diameter. Under scrutiny using my little Leica C-LUX 1 camera in macro setting with a 9x magnifying glass, the patch instantly grew into an intricate city of green irregular leaves and cups. Moreover, the group of tiny black specks turned out to be an army of insects who'd taken residence there in a frenzy, burying their heads in the lichen skin.

Laurens Sparrius recognized it to be Lecanora muralis, in Dutch Muurschotelkorst, a very common lichen.

I'll also post pictures of the camera and magnifying glass used here.

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Citroenkorsten

On the outskirts of the town of Korbach, just withing the old city walls, there's a graveyard. Memorial stones fitted into the city wall, gravestones standing more or less upright in shady corners.
Open spots, trees, brushes. A place to hide, temporarily or forever. Luckily, the stones are respectfully neglected, so lichens can settle.
Two examples here, both Caloplaca. The first I assume to be C. decipiens, the second C. flavescens.

Stoffige citroenkorst

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Gelobde citroenkorst

Lichens / Korstmos

After overlooking them for half a century, I started noticing lichens and they amaze me by their timid splendor. Fungus and algae symbiotically creating wild variations of appearance and color, hues and textures, settling unobtrusively on places that seem hard to survive on. Growing so slowly... You can't buy them and plant them on your trees or garden wall, you can only provide spots for them to come to you and then hope they do.
While hiking in Germany, standing on a panoramically high spot overlooking the long deep Diemelsee valley, a reservoir lake resting deep down like a lazy dark blue snake, there's a tree behind me and just above the roots there's a small green spot. In contrast with the massive panorama, there's this tiny world of curves and folds, more impressive really.
And on a gravestone on the ancient graveyard of Korbach, a patch of lichen the size of a thumbnail, bland to the naked eye, with the tiniest of black dots, turns out to be a small city where black insects have invaded the green, gorging themselves on something below the skin.
I bought a Dutch field guide for lichens. My plan is to take pictures, post them here and work with the guide to collect names and infomation about the finds.


I assume this is Evernia prunastri (in Dutch: Eikenmos, Gewoon geweimos).