I am on about lichens here of late, mostly because they're one of the reliably interesting things this time of year (We're not quite to frogs and mole salamanders... a week or two, though, and they'll be more interesting. This is the mountains and it's cold. I checked out the usual soggy wets for egg masses and ... not yet. Soon, but not yet.) Anyway, lichens. The Internets (my resource for things, because even if it sucks, it is free) suggest that lichens grow "very slowly" or "sometimes very slowly and sometimes faster" which is fine as far as it goes but not... not really what I want. Most studies of lichen growth rates are on small round dot lichens up north, which is not all that helpful.
The internet does not have good information for how long it takes a rock greenshield lichen to get so big that I couldn't stand on it with both of my feet and still have lichen peeking out around the edges. (They totes get that big around here. See here: https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/9940170 and yes, I can see that that one is really two smaller lichens that have grown into each other with, if you want to be technical about it, two other, smaller ones on top that are also in the process of merging into the whole, here.) This is a big lichen, like easily 15 cm across. So... this lichen grows at what rate?
Because I was curious, I did some reading beyond Wikipedia and http://publications.aston.ac.uk/15210/1/Folios_lichen_growth_review_for_pdf.pdf -- this article was particularly interesting, but basically nobody out there is answering the questions I want answered in an 'explain it like I'm 5' sort of way, which are these.
How big, approximately, does a rock greenshield lichen have to be before it gets all fluffy in the middle?
2a. Why do they get all fluffy in the middle? Are they old? Dying? Insane? Under attack by some other lichen due to having made a microhabitat at the center of themselves that favors colonization by something else? What is going on with that? It's an age/size related thing -- smaller ones do not do that fluffy business.
I'm kind of curious about this. Maybe I should look into it.
Comentarios
following :)
Agregar un comentario