Stick Art

Day 165: First and foremost, Mother Nature is a scientist. Of that, there can be no doubt, but it is not always about improving design to make it more efficient or durable. Sometimes her creative side surfaces and then, if we are privileged, we may witness an exhibition of her art.

I had several goals in mind when I left home yesterday for a hike. Very few of them bore any fruit. I did manage to cover five or six miles without seeing or hearing another human being, although the buzz of a chainsaw was audible from the top of the hill. It temporarily drowned out the chorus of Pacific Tree Frogs who were singing their spring anthem in the wetland below, though not the voices of Canada Geese flying overhead. Once back in the forest, the chips and cheeps of woodland birds were the only sounds, and I was left to enjoy visual immersion in uncountable shades of green. Here and there, the Cardamine inserted a pale pink accent, its flowers nodding, unwilling to fully wake into the light, damp chill of the morning, and a few Trillium who had had too much rain at last night's party tried to shake off the aftereffects with limited success. There were no spring mushrooms, not yet, and the nettles were too far advanced to pick for tea. They were quite defensive, and expressed their sentiments toward being gathered by biting me through nitrile gloves. With "gathering" removed from my list on those two counts, "exercise" was the next best option. I decided to cover as much ground as the weather and mud would permit, with "photography" a given as it is any time I am out and about.

The wildlife area near Mossyrock Dam affords a variety of ecological niches. Managed by Cowlitz Wildlife under the auspices of WDFW, it offers woods, ponds, grasslands and thickets spaced throughout roughly 14,000 acres. There are only a few maintained trails and no "destinations," rendering it less popular with hikers than other areas. I have observed a number of interesting plants and fungi there, and a wealth of lichens, many of which I have yet to identify. I was walking the ADA trail when I found this stick, barely recognizable as such beneath its lavish embellishments of lichen and moss, Art in its purest form. The scientific half of my brain registered Ochrolechia (little round dots), Usnea (wiry threads), Platismatia (ruffled lobes) and a moss even as the artistic side exclaimed, "That's beautiful!" Ma Nature had succeeded in engaging my full appreciation, a feat no human artist has ever managed. All other considerations aside, the Stick was the highlight of my hike, and I don't say that lightly.

Lichen Basics

Day 106: This is the type of dry reading you're likely to see on official NPS pages from here on out, but at least it's science.

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Those of us who live in the Pacific Northwest are fortunate to have a wide variety of lichen species in our forests. Although lichens appear in almost every geographic region of North America, the leafier types are more abundant on the northwest and northeast coasts. Many of them are mistakenly called "mosses," but in fact they are complex symbiotic organisms. One of the most exciting revelations in the field of lichenology occurred this year when a third component was identified in the classic "fungus/algae" pairing: yeast. Let's look more closely at some common PNW lichens and learn a little of the specialized terminology which describes them.

There are three basic types of lichen: foliose, fruticose and crustose. Foliose ("FOH-lee-ose") lichens are "leafy" (think "foliage"). Platismatia (upper left) is an excellent example. Fruticose ("FROO-ti-cose") lichens are bushy or shrubby, or have a three-dimensional structure which often includes round stalks topped by cups or knobs. The photo in the upper right shows an example of Cladonia, a classic fruticose family.

Sometimes, it is difficult to assign a lichen to a specific category. The lower left image shows a Hypogymnia. The Hypogymnias are classified as "foliose-fruticose." The last type of lichen is called crustose ("CRUST-ose"), and as you might guess, it forms a crust which adheres tightly to trees and rocks. Crustose lichens often exhibit small fruiting bodies such as those which appear on Ochrolechia (lower right).