Of the many natural delights to be found in urban areas, lichens present a reliable and readily available source of enquiry during even the most ordinary of strolls. However given the twenty thousand various species into which they have been divided, how can the amateur naturalist even begin to approach identification without toting along massive tomes and keys on even the shortest, most casual foray outdoors?
When you really come right down to it, it’s the little things that matter most; the small, too easily overlooked details that are the foundation upon which so much ultimately depends. In the oceans it’s the myriad forms of plankton that form the foundation of the food chains upon which so much of the life there depends, and on land it’s the mosses, fungi, lichen, and plants that live along the ground in the boundary layer between the earth and the atmosphere that likewise keep so many ecological systems running.
In the famous exchange on the subject of pastry in the musical Guys and Dolls, in rebuttal to Nicely-Nicely Johnson’s encouragement to try to the cheesecake or the strudel, both wildly popular, when it is discovered that the restaurant in which they are sitting is sold out of Danish that day, Nathan Detroit observes “That’s […]