Seen In A Different Light

Day 113: I have to admit that I have been in a foul mood, so dark that even science failed to pull me out of it yesterday, and for that I apologize to my readers. Today, I am seeing things in a different light, quite literally. The Usneas I had brought home from Orting were eluding identification until I put two of them under UV this morning. Despite some minor and acceptable morphological variation, both proved to be Usnea subfloridana, a bushier and shorter species than U. pacificana (which is also UV+). A Ramalina on the same twig also yielded a positive reaction to UV, if not to my efforts to identify it conclusively. My mood improved substantially once I'd put a name to the specimen.

Lichens Rock!

Day 112: Lichens rock! This is a younger example of Polycauliona polycarpa from a different location than yesterday's rosette. Niche ecology can have an effect on many species' growth habits: presence of abundant moisture may produce a higher algal concentration, exposure to wind or polluted air may cause changes in shape, colour or size; even the presence of other lichens may affect the delicate chemistry in a lichen community. Field characteristics can be misleading in the overview, as was the case with the Polycauliona rosette I featured yesterday. Exposed to the fumes of traffic, portions of it had lost the distinctive yellow-orange colour which typifies the species.

And that said, I have spent a frustrating morning with half a dozen samples from two outings, only three of which I have managed to identify. Although I enjoy a good puzzle, I do prefer to fit all the pieces together in a tidy package. It's not happening, and I blame the political situation. Normally, I can find refuge in science, occupying my mind with the whys and wherefores, but today I am asking myself whether it's worth trying to educate a humanity which seems bent on its own destruction, and worse, set to take the planet down with it. I am finding no comfort, not even in the company of my beloved lichens.

Author Unknown

Day 110: Well, this is a little embarrassing. However, when I stand back and really look at it, it's also hilarious.

While out on a four-mile walk on the relatively new and extraordinarily ugly levee trail in Orting yesterday, I was searching for anything noteworthy for my daily posts. I thought I'd struck paydirt when I found a script lichen unlike anything I'd seen before, multiple examples of it occurring on several young Red Alders on the bank of the Puyallup River. I could not remove a sample without damaging the bark. Nor did I have a hand lens, so I took close-up photos of several different examples and conducted a visual analysis with my nose to the tree. The lirellae (the type of apothecia unique to the scripts) seemed to be incised into the bark rather than rising above it. I knew that some species have lirellae which lie beneath the bark surface, so I was sure that would narrow the field when I began searching for an ID. I kept thinking, "They look like dirty thumbprints in wet paint...how very odd!" and reviewing my eidetic memory files, I couldn't recall having seen anything with that morphology in either Brodo or McCune. A diligent page-by-page search of both field guides confirmed my fears: this one was going to be problematic. In the end, I gave up and for the first time in well over a year, sent photos off to lichenologist extraordinaire Katherine Glew, explaining that "I just can't make this one fit in anywhere." I had a note back from her in my morning email clarifying the authorship of the unusual script: "This looks like grazing by a snail or slug."

Live and learn. I do not get to add another lichen to my Life List, but at least now I will be able to recognize the marks of snail teeth. Whodathunkit?

A Good Word, "Resupinate"

Day 109: It's a good word, "resupinate." You ought to be able to pick up a clue to its meaning if you parse it. In everyday language, to be "supine" means "lying face upward." It's the opposite of "prone," which of course you know means "lying face downward," because you are a literate person and appreciate the semantic distinction. A resupinate fungus, therefore, is one which is growing upside down or, if you prefer, pores up. Think of the more familiar shelf fungi. They have a hard upper surface and pores or teeth on the lower portion. Resupinate fungi grow the other way around, as this beautiful specimen of Irpex lacteus demonstrates.

You never know what you may find when you take a closer look at Nature. I'd decided to walk the restored levee trail in Orting from the bridge north, and was rather thinking I'd made a very bad choice after the first mile of barren gravel. Well, it's the top of a levee. What did I expect? It was built to keep Orting safe from flood, so it's raised above the wetland by ten feet or so, essentially a berm of fill which keeps the river on one side and the city on the other. It is singularly ugly, but of course I didn't know that when I started out. The sides are lined with riprap, so there was no way to get within touching distance of anything even remotely vegetative, unless the occasional invasive (Japanese knotweed or buddleia) was to your liking. It was only after I'd reached the end and was coming back that I noticed a lightly lichenized cottonwood next to a short trail leading into a housing complex. Eh, it was worth a look, so I sheared off from the main trail and almost stepped on a small branch bearing a little colony of bright orange Xanthoria. I knelt down to take a photo (desperation!), picked up a second branch harboring an Usnea and a non-sorediate Ramalina and...what in the world? There was the resupinate in all its glory. For what it's worth, Irpex is common worldwide, even if I'd never come across it in my travels. Two inches of a fungus (which to my mind looks rather like a tromped-on slug) really made my day.

Western Gull, Larus Occidentalis

Day 111: In the Pacific Northwest, only out-of-staters take pictures of seagulls. Only out-of-staters carry umbrellas, for that matter. Both behaviours mark a person as a little peculiar, an outsider who wouldn't understand the gaffe even if it was explained to them. Consequently, photos of seagulls doing nothing out of the ordinary are few and far between, pigeonholed (forgive me) with pictures of robins and starlings, English sparrows and yes, pigeons. A photo of a seagull gulping down herring may draw something marginally longer than a cursory glance, but even that is quickly passed over by most Pacific Northwesterners as commonplace.

What drew my attention to this bird in the Puyallup River was its abrupt plunge into a pool at the base of a log and the flurry of activity which followed. I presumed it had found a salmon carcass because it was clearly feeding. Once it had satisfied itself, it lifted off only to settle again on a gravel bar in the middle of the river. It seemed to know I was watching it despite the distance between us, so for just a moment, I became a tourist. Well, I suppose my compendium of PNW birds wouldn't be complete without a silly seagull in it!