The brown season is coming in strong. The last few cold nights of 24 degrees F have caused leaves to do sudden dumps.
The maple forest was incredible with spots of yellow where the maples dropped everything overnight. The oaks before the last cold days still had the brilliant red. I checked the leaves and the brilliant reds were Red Oaks. The dullish leaves were White Oaks.
The green in the lower portion of the above photo is of those nasty Buckthorn Trees. They stay green well into late November.
A White Oak with a nekked Birch in front of it.
Yesterday in the late afternoon, I decided to take Charlie and just look for Lichen. Perhaps with a different subject to find, I'd feel better about the brown season.
What I did not know is that some Lichen actually prefer fall and winter. There is more moisture and it isn't as hot. Some Lichen go dormant in the cold weather. Either way, they are easier to find in the fall and spring without all of the other plants hiding them.
Lichen are super easy to find. This is a shot of a tree trunk on a trail and two different Lichens on the tree.
Found on a mossy rock.
Logs, logs...logs.
This seems to be a great place to find Lichen. See the arrow? That points to the place where I used my macro lens to shoot this lichen embedded in moss.
I used a small pouch filled with soy husks as a tripod and set the camera to its very narrow 'focus' stack feature.
I'm not going to try and ID it, but just thought it was rather pretty and amazing that we can see something So Tiny!
It just looks like a crazy foreign world doesn't it?
I found some dried up orange fungi mixed in with some pretty greenish/bluish turquoise colored Lichen. The orange fungi is often called False Turkey Tail.
And I leave this blog with my favorite shot of a beautiful Yellow Lichen, which is rumored to be a Sunburst [common name] Lichen.
First my finger next to the multi colored Lichens...
Then The Happy Lichen.... isn't it cute? Look at the brilliant colors!
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Lichen
Awesome focus on that camera. Whenever I try to get a close up... it is a struggle. And usually it fails. I get blurry results. I know very little about various "crust fungus" other than they are NOT mushrooms. But they could be lichens for all I know. Most of the time, I just possibly guess correctly. Leaves are falling very fast here in Iowa now. Won't be long before the color is all gone. And it was a rather good year for Color in Iowa this year.
ReplyDeleteThe closeups sometimes need a special lens. And sometimes it is better to back up and try it then crop in. The last shot was cropped.
DeleteI like lichens and it is fun to see them through your eyes! A long time ago I took a Botony Class and had to identify them...oh that was hard:)
ReplyDeleteYes, the identification sometimes takes chemical reactions. One day I may get a microscope. I think that would be fun.
DeleteCool finds! I like the side-by-side comparisons. Have you ever heard of UW's Swap store? They repurpose interesting stuff. There is a microscope on there right now, but it is getting bid up. Looks like overkill, and way too big to me anyways.
ReplyDeleteI'd love a microscope, but then I am afraid I'd get lost in finding things to bring home and look at and never get any other work done!
DeleteWhen looking up lichen, I found it really confusing to try and see what it was found on in relation to size. So I wanted to make it easier here.
I had no idea there was such a variety of them! I'm lichen those yellow ones though!
ReplyDeleteThanks, yes there are so many some of them have yet to be discovered. They are so colorful and small.
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