Saturday 7 January 2017

at last!

For the third winter in a row I've wandered round Dare Valley Country Park trying to find the Goldeneye lichen, Teloschistes chrysophthalamus, that was found there a few years back. Finally, I connected with this rarity. As I approached a heavily lichen infested Hawthorn my thought process went along the following path: "This looks promising, I wonder how long, there it is."

Yep, it was that quick. It wasn't looking at it best, many of the "eyelashes" were missing or folded back itself, but I didn't care, it was just good to finally connect with it. Now I know just what it looks like, I know what to look for elsewhere and see if I can match Mark and find more in the area.

4 comments:

  1. Well done, I am going to have to get my a**e in gear and have a look myself.

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  2. Good on you. I'm hoping to come across it somewhere else, as I search for lichenocolous fungi. Looking at your photo, the whole plant (if you can call a lichen a plant)... okay; the whole thing looks crisped, as if it is desicated, which is odd, as it was so damp yeasterday, that I would have expected it to be all plumptious and lovely.
    Perhaps it is just the character of that individual. It certainly looks quite different in appearance to the the one I found elsewhere in the valley, which was more compact and had much shorter "eyelashes".

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  3. Mark, my thoughts were that this was probably past its best for this year.

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  4. I wonder if it is a bit frost damaged, because until recently, it has been a species confined coastal areas; so you have to wonder how hardy it is and what would happen to ours if we had a really hard winter.

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