Cladonia Bellidiflora

Day 132: I am fairly certain that this is Cladonia bellidiflora, although there is another very similar species (you'll hear me say that frequently with reference to lichens). Both are typified by their extremely squamose (scaly) stalks, but bellidiflora purportedly has redder apothecia. This wonderful specimen was found in Smallwood Park in Eatonville, WA.

The foregoing paragraph brings me to the point of a seeming nonsequitur: I hate history. I have never done well at history or at geography for that matter, but at English and the sciences, I excelled. A few days ago while pursuing the study of lichens, I realized why I dislike history.= so passionately. In it, there is no new terminology.

In history, you will find no squamules, no podetia. It is neither nidicolous nor altricial. It is not composed of gluons or quarks or neutrinos. It does not possess nares or a supercilium. In short, history is no more than a collection of the language's most boring, mundane words, "fourteen hundred and ninety-two," "colonists," "kings" and "politics."

As a person who is fascinated by words, history has nothing to hold my interest. Lichens, on the other hand, are a verbal garden wherein I may pick from an entire new semantic species, and if English alone does not suffice, I can delight in tracing the lineage of Latin upon which the taxonomy depends.

Yes, give me lichens with their Brave New Words, and keep your Nina, Pinta and Santa Maria. I am in bliss among the soredia and pseudocyphellae of my fruticose and foliose friends!