365Caws is now in its 14th year of publication, and was originally intended to end after 365 days. It has sometimes been difficult for me to find new material, particularly during the winter months, but now as I enter my own twilight years, I cannot guarantee that I will be able to provide daily posts. It is my hope that along the way I may have inspired someone to a greater curiosity about the natural world. If so, I can rest, content in the knowledge that my work here has been done.
Saturday, January 25, 2020
Lichenscape
Day 104: I love my fence, although it's a source of great frustration. It supports an astonishingly varied lichenscape, mostly Cladonias which unfortunately are very difficult to differentiate. Still, the utter lushness of the colonies give me reason to pause beside the posts on all but the rainiest of days, hoping to find one visual clue to aid in identification. This particular post holds Cladonia parastica among others, that in itself unusual since the species has not otherwise been recorded in the Pacific Northwest. How they arrived alongside my driveway is a mystery, but they respond quite convincingly to any chemical test I've been able to perform. Some day, I may ship a specimen off to an expert in the field, but for now, I'll be content to admire their spires and towers, a city in microcosm along the route to my mailbox.
Labels:
Cladonia parasitica,
fence
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