Visit a forested area that’s not near a city, and you’ll see all sorts of lichens decorating trees and rocks. But if you visit an urban area or walk alongside a highway roaring with traffic, you won’t find very many lichens. As a matter of fact, Downtown Boston is a lichen desert. Lichens get nutrients from […]
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Tag: Larry’s articles
May the Lichens Be With You
If flowers are commonly placed on a loved one’s final resting place, why shouldn’t lichens be allowed to reside on that loved one’s gravestone? After all, a lichen on a gravestone occupies a branch on the tree of life considerably closer to the branch occupied by that loved one than a chrysanthemum. Plus, that lichen […]
Over-Collecting (Mushrooms)
Not too long ago, I led a mushroom walk in central Massachusetts for the North Country Land Trust. Just prior to my foray, there’d been a mycological club foray at the same site, and the vast number of mushrooms collected by those foragers lay in waste on the ground near a picnic table. As a […]