Cladonia

Day 30: With over 70 species of Cladonia in our area, I am not going to attempt to narrow this one down further to a specific variety. It grows in profusion on the sides of wet, shady slopes, a lichen among mosses at low to middle elevations. This specimen was growing in Charles L. Pack Experimental Forest.

In reading my field guides, I have learned that lichens retain radioactivity in much higher concentrations than flowering plants do and in turn pass it along to creatures higher on the food chain, such as the animals which rely on the species for fodder. A frightening thought occurs: that the venison jerky my neighbor provides might be laced with isotopes which somewhere down the line might prove deleterious to my health.

It all connects...a thread here, a fiber there...all woven into the fragile web we call Life.