Little Bit of Lichen

A photograph of a rather lichen-covered bit of wood (in fact, it's the top of the same wooden post in the same stile as a previous photograph). I like the texture and the colours - really I have to admit I'm all about colours when it comes to photography. Some monochrome photography does appeal, but on the whole I'm definitely drawn to pictures where the colours are particularly intense, or unusual, or contrasting.

Tree Trunk

Oh, how I wish this was in better focus! It was just a bit too dark for the camera to cope well with it, but the colour of the wood was what I wanted to capture and using the flash just deadened it completely. So it remains, a teeny bit too blurry to be good, but still alright, I guess. This was a particularly cool piece of fallen wood, anyhow, and the red ferns and blue-green lichen are an interesting contrast. I guess I shall just have to return to the tree trunk on a sunnier day.

Lichen

This tree was insanely bedecked with hangers-on of all shades.

Interestingly, what we think of as lichen is actually a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and a photosynthetic organism like a green alga. Who knew? It's like when I found out that a Portuguese Man o'War is not a jellyfish.* Except lichen doesn't have 50 metre long tentacles. For which I am sure we're all thankful.


* It's a siphonophore, a collection of different organisms called zooids. So. Now you know.