Lichens (Collins New Naturalist Library, Volume 86)
Oliver Gilbert
Language: English
Pages: 309
ISBN: 1853973734
Format: PDF / Kindle (mobi) / ePub
Lichens are fascinating and beautiful organisms able to colonise a vast range of habitats, including seemingly impossible places such as bare icy mountain tops and sun-scorched coastal rocks. This book discusses all aspects of British lichens, revealing the secrets of their success. This edition is exclusive to newnaturalists.com
Lichens are fascinating and beautiful organisms able to colonise a vast range of habitats, including seemingly impossible places such as bare icy mountain tops and sun-scorched coastal rocks. This book discusses all aspects of British lichens, revealing the secrets of their success.
The book begins by looking at how lichens have been used throughout history in medicines, dyes, food and perfumes. It then goes on to describe what lichens are, and how they grow and reproduce. A detailed survey is given of the range of habitats in which lichens can be found: on trees, rocks, heaths and moors, chalk and limestone, mountains, rivers, lakes, the coast, walls and buildings, most famously on churches and in churchyards. Gilbert also discusses the susceptibility of lichens to air pollution, and how they can be used to detect environmental pollution.
The comprehensive, reader-friendly text, over 150 illustrations and 16 pages of colour, combine to make Lichens the definitive work on this subject of great natural history interest.
mention. Due to the habitat conditions the community, even on acid rock such as granite or Millstone Grit, has a general resemblance to those of slightly basic substrata such as basalt. It includes mild nitrophiles like Lecanora muralis, Parmelia verruculifera and Physconia grisea. The undersides of boulders support distinctive shade communities containing species of Enterographa, Lecania, Micarea and Opegrapha. Specialist fluvial species are absent, but this zone can produce surprises like the
years elapsed before Alvin (1960) made the next advance when studying the very acid dunes at Studland Heath, Dorset. Here, three main ridges run parallel to the shore forming a system some 800 m wide which he divided into six sections, typifying the lichens of each by determining their frequency in a 100 random quadrats (Fig. 13.7). Huge differences occurred between the youngest marram grass (Ammophila) zone dominated by Cladonia chlorophaea, C. coniocraea, C. humilis, C. polydactyla and C.
occur sporadically, for example the beautiful hook-tip (Laspeyria flexula), dotted carpet (Alcis jubata) (Plate 3c), marbled beauty (Cryphia domestica), marbled green (C. muralis), marbled grey (C. raptricula) and speckled beauty (Fagivorina arenaria). These extend the range of lichen food plants to Diploica canescens, Lecidea confluens, Lobaria pulmonaria, Physcia spp. and Xanthoria parietina, though most frequently the lichen is described in the literature as ‘various’ or ‘unspecified’. Since
it has been described as the finest remnant of old forest remaining in Britain. This is an understatement; in the opinion of many experts it is the finest ancient forest remaining on the lowland plains of northwest Europe. This view is based on its extent, the very large number of old trees (Plate 5a), the relative lack of human interference, its invertebrate fauna, the amount of dead wood and its incomparably rich epiphytic lichen and bryophyte flora. What factors have conspired to create this
chromatography, which means that progress in the field is slow and gets slower as the weight of specimens increases. It is more rewarding to work a single boulder for an hour or a corrie for a day than to cover a lot of ground superficially; a party will always record more comprehensively than an individual. Macrolichens provide light relief. Fig. 6.11 Ursula Duncan, for many years the British expert on upland saxicolous lichens; Glen Isla, 1969 (C.D. Bird). Exposed rock, present as