Wildlife Wednesday: Weird and Wonderful LIchens, Part 1

by Andy Ames

Wildlife Wednesday, part one. A look back at a previous post in anticipation of tomorrow’s talk - EVWC Presents : Weird and Wonderful Lichens, 6-7 PM at the Estes Valley Community Center.

For more information see https://www.evwatershed.org/.../ev-watershed-presents...

Lichen comes in a variety of shapes, textures, and colors.

This one is more uniform in color but you can see the variety of shapes and layers.

This one is more uniform in color but you can see the variety of shapes and layers.

Lichens come in 3 forms, crusty, leafy, and shrubby. Crusty is the form you are probably most familiar with as it forms a thin, crusty layer. Leafy and shrubby are shown here. Leafy has the green lettuce-like appearance. Shrubby is more web-like and can be seen as the pale structure in the upper left.

Lichen provide an important food source for a variety of animals. Here a chipmunk is feeding on lichen.

Hummingbirds make nests from lichen, mosses, and spider webs. (Can you see the tiny beak sticking up?)

Lichen have a variety of ways to reproduce. They can reproduce as a single symbiotic fungal/algae unit or the fungi and algae can reproduce independently. They will only survive as a lichen, however, when the two come together. Here you can see little mushroom-like reproductive structures emerging from the surface of the lichen.

Lichen can grow on a wide variety of surfaces. These lichen have chosen an Aspen tree.

Lichen growing on old wood.

Lichens also provide an important environmental service of breaking down rock to help form soils.