Lichens of Silurian Greywacke

I have been making a display of activities of Craven Conservation Group ready for the YNU Conference on 8 April. The display is based on a map of our area of North Craven. I'll show you it another time.  In doing so I have discovered that our area has the oldest rocks in Yorkshire. 

Here I am sitting on some of these rocks. (With Fountains Fell in the background)

The Silurian (443Myr-419Myr) and Ordovician (485Myr-443Myr ) rocks are 450 Million years old (ish). They got worn away and then became covered by the sea; Then 350 Million years ago in this sea, limestone formed on top of them. There is thus a gap in time of 100 million years between the Silurian "slate" and the Carboniferous Limestone. This line is called an "Unconformity".

Water sinks into the cracks in limestone, but cannot pass through the slate so comes out in Springs.  On Sunday 19th we had lots of rain at Settle and the springs appeared in many places, marking the unconformity. Our Geology Tutor noticed that in his trip to Crummackdale. I just noted that the road at Studfold was flooded on the way to Horton Marmalade Festival, got to the Church bought lunch and came home as quickly as I could.
The old rock is actually not slate because it has a lot of particles in it of mixed sizes. This type of rock is called Greywacke. 
 Greywacke  is a poorly sorted sandstone containing fragments of rock and minerals in a clayey matrix.  
Formation of Greywacke

On 15th March I set off on a walk north of Sannat Hall, near Stainforth. On returning I descended through a field with the bedrock showing.  The rock is an acid rock so has different lichens to the  limestone higher up the hill.

This is Candelariella coralliza
It is bright yellow, and grows on exposed acid rocks where birds perch. It has a thick areolate thallus (the thallus forms little islands) Dobson says it is rarely fertile; this patch is. (Someone just may tell me it is C vitellina.. I must admit the in the picture here, the thallus is not as thick as that which we found at Turf Hill or that I found at Wrynose Pass)

Or maybe the fruiting bodies are C vitellina, and the more cracked, yellower thallus nearby is C. coralliza.

Hey ho, the granules do appear too flattened for  C. coralliza

Xanthoparmelia conspersa This is a splendid lichen.
I had become excited when I found it three months earlier just above Stainforth .. I suppose only half a mile away from where I was now.
We found some at Eycott Hill at the edge of the North Lake District, three years ago. The thallus lobes up to 3mm wide overlap; It has coralloid isidia





Or on video:- 

I think the next lichen is Tremolecia atrata - 
though to be sure it is not Rhizocarpon oederi I woud have to check the spores to make sure they are simple, and not muriform as in  R oederi







Next there is Acarospora fuscata






Stereocaulon  evolutum
This branches spread more from the base than does S vesuvianum. The phyllocladia are wider than the pseudopodetia, and are flattened, almost digitate

(Even if this photo is vesuvianum, the piece I brought back with me was evolutum)



Next is Parmelia omphalodes  It is reddy brown





The next one is Physcia
Physcia caesia I think.








This next one is a mystery lichen - any suggestions?
It is on the same acid rock as the other species above.





Here we have a jelly lichen. The fruiting bodies are on stalks, ant there are no isidia - so I am guessing it is Collema polycarpon It was growing on the acid rock but it was being flushed with lime rich water and growing near base loving mosses such as Scorpidium cossonii  



The next is a video. I think it may well start with Nostoc, and finish with Scorpidium cossonii, but in the middle there is some Collema.

This next one was one of the most beautiful lichens .. then I realised it was just Leanora muralis. It grows near the centre of large towns on paving stones, and I think on the tarmac of Horton churchyard.  Dobson says "Often on acid rocks, rarer in its natural habitat of bird-perching sites in uplands





Here's a view looking along the limestone. The Silurian rock is to the right and lower down. The limestone is covered by glacial drift and the Yoredale series to the left






Yes I still have my Christmas Pudding hat .. It was Christmassy cold weather.

Lent: Week 4: No new food: a- vegetables-and-protein supplement

I start Week 4

and  have added a vegetables and protein supplement!

I do have lentils, quinoa, and porridge oats, left in stock...

.

(An Imperial College report says we should aim for 10 helping of veg and fruit a day (800g = 1.75 lb:- - 10  x 80g portions), not just our five a day)

All Week 3 I was looking forward to buying some more eggs, fresh veg and potatoes

COST (including 1 more cauliflower and carrot-parsnip-mash and frozen spinach later in week)- £18.06 

I tried to make the food - ethical - LOAF - Local, Organic, Animal friendly, Fairtrade

Quorn is 59% mycoprotein,
(but has rehydrated free range egg white, and some milk protein in it - so not vegan)
It is very passable as chicken breast in both texture and taste.
It is marketed from Stokesley in N Yorkshire (71 miles away, and 5 miles from the hill Roseberry Topping)
but I wonder where the mycoprotein is grown and packaged?
Ah, i see Wikipedia says it is made at Stokesley and at Billingham, Stockton on Tees. - the fungus is Fusarium venenatum and it is fed on glucose and fixed nitrogen compounds.
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12 Local  Eggs:  (from sale at Tosside Village Hall) (Plus 3 donated form Ingleton later) £3-00 I think
Organic butter 1.75; (I do have olive oil left but it is a bit rancid) - luxury
2 packets Quorn - roast - £2-00 a "loaf" - (can be used a chicken breast and can cut into about 6 )
2.5Kg Potatoes £1.65
Organic Carrots 750g : £1-95
Fresh ginger 41p
Carrot and Parsnip Mash    1.35 (though not sure why they are imported from Ireland... though Booths is a NW supermarket, and the packets will come via sea)
Cauliflower on offer - 50p and 55p 2.2 lb each
Frozen spinach 1kg

(Last week I gained 1/2 lb. Maybe a not significant change - or maybe due to lack of veg: maybe due to over treating and over eating in my four meals out last weekend)

Lent: Week 3: No new food: b - Main course

Lent: Week 3 of buying no new food ingredients for home

And the Main Course on Wednesday:-

  

From a weight loss point of View - at Slimming World after 2 weeks I had lost a further 2 lb - Hurray -

Here are the ingredients I found to cook with on Wednesday at the beginning of Week 3:

Soup mix (from a small bag given to me by a lady in Settle Spinners last autumn)- that's just a small portion of hat I made.

Piece of ginger from last month - that ginger has been great.

Small piece of  fish I kept from the Fish and Chips meal I was invited out to the previous evening. Delicious.

Last jerusalem artichoke - I just slice it and microwave it- it is good way to eat it -

Marrow - “fresh from a friend’s allotment 6 weeks ago". I sliced it open two days ago. Excellent.

Lentils (I couldn’t be lasting this long without my supply of lentils)

Chicken gravy bisto - a year and a quarter old  but still “in date”.. and makes for tasty soup.

Onion.

I ate the fish by itself and put the other ingredients rest into the soup.

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Stocks are getting lower:  I have eaten most of my "this year" and "last year year"s tins

I have a very few two year old and three year old packets/bottles - but don't really fancy them.

I still have the staple of (January) oats, lentils and quinoa to go at, and some ancient all bran and newish coffee/milk powder.

And I have my unopened Christmas Cake waiting - If visitors come I will have something to give them.

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I find I am really valuing my trips and visits out.

Tue:    Fish and Chips

Wed:   Hotcross buns and biscuits at the Lent Talk on Wednesday.

Thur:   Biscuits at the Talk on “Guisburn Forest” on Thursday. There were.

Fri:     Nothing!!. ( I went swimming  and was even hungrier!)  So lentils and quinoa at home it is.

Sat:am  the “Churches Together” Big Breakfast

Sat Lunch: Pioneer Projects (Dementia Art Group) fund raising lunch  Bacon butty followed by Chicken and Veg Soup.

Sun: lunch: Horton in Ribblesdale “Marmalade Festival” - I ploughed through the flooded road at Studfold to get there and back

Sun Tea: "Messy Church” in the afternoon. Shepherds pie; Jelly and ice cream.

Mon: Nothing -- (So lentils, quinoa, tinned spinach, and oat porridge and bottled apple)

So I think I will make it to the end of week 3 (Tuesday evening)

Lent Week 3: No new food: a - All bran brownies:

At Slimming World last week,  Sheila, or one of the participants brought some Wheetabix-chocolate  "brownies". So I tried the same with All Bran:

My version 

Ingredients: All bran; cocoa powder, Local honey (that I had bought for the Just Food Evening in Feb and not used - could be supplemented with sugar iv necessary) and coconut oil (that may be 3 and a half years old but is fine - I keep using it intermittently) and a little water.

Quantities : Some of each till it tasted right. Microwaved.

They tasted fine - Not SO fine that they were extremely "morish" But a good substitutes for sweets, or comfort desert. I cut them into small pieces and they lasted quite a few days.

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Lent: Buy no new food ingredients for home: 2

I wrote this for Slimmers World - Slimming Club: 

BUT:

This post is visible world wide: 

I really wonder what people who are really short of money or who are really starving must make of it... Or even of my wasting my time writing it... whilst I read posts on the internet such as:-

This week: The world is facing its largest humanitarian crisis since 1945, the United Nations says, issuing a plea for help to avoid "a catastrophe".

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-africa-39238808

UN humanitarian chief Stephen O'Brien said that more than 20 million people faced the threat of starvation and famine in Yemen, Somalia, South Sudan and Nigeria.

(And (complete change of subject) for the record, yesterday the BBC News has just changed it's format - it may be much more mobile phone friendly - but it is nearly all big pictures and very little text - maybe they are lowering the standards to appeal  2/3 of the UK population who can't read so well (sounds arrogant?) - Or maybe (sensibly) making it accessible to people for whom English is a second language. 
Indeed I have just enlarged the print here to make this easier for you to read.

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Right back to the topic of this blog:
"  Existing on the food left in the house without buying anything new for Lent."

So how did I get on with my “No new home food for Lent” diet at the weigh in after one week? Last Tuesday, one week in, I had hoped to lose 2 lb 
I lost 3 lb.!!

Hurray! Filling the SAS form must have worked.

 (actually I had put on 2 lb over that previous 2 weeks - so maybe it is really only a net loss of 1 lb.)

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It will be much harder this week to lose anything at all. 
I am running out of veg to eat, never mind speed foods. 
Mind I did OK on Saturday, 11 days in (see picture at top)

I opened the tin of globe artichokes;

I microwaved the two week old packet of "sell by" sprouts; I microwaved the onion and its by now long green shoots. I removed the sprouted shoots off two potatoes and sliced the potatoes.

And had a big stack of microwaved lentils (See picture)

For calcium and fat I had half a Wensleydale cheese - an Orange and Champagne cheese. 
Delicious 
(A post Christmas bargain). 
And Scandinavian Bran Crispbread.

Desert was the last of my tin of forest fruits with raw oats and a little sugar (I really like and recommend that - I am sure it is healthy, though it may dissolve my teeth.)

And for medical reasons (a cold - feeble excuse) some Halls cough sweets.

And several cups of tea and coffee with reduced fat coffee whitener. And Lemsip.

Lent: Buy no food for home: Progress Report 1: and seven reflections

I waste food.
I succumb "Sell by date food" offers.
I have jars of three year old chutney in the house.

Lent 2017 offers me the chance to "Resolve to buy not food for the house
- - at least not until I have eaten everything."

Aims:
1. To clear out new, and ancient food in my house. And prehistoric.
2. To remove the temptation of buying more food than I need, or indeed, can eat. The superb bargains from the Coop and Booths have thwarted my attempts at Slimming World since January.
3. To see what I learn.

Initial stocks:

My initial stocks of food were "average" - I had had a "No new buy" attempt at the beginning of January that lasted about two weeks (with lapses) - which cleared most of my Christmas stock of extra cheese and mince pies.

Two weeks ago I bought in an extra 1.5 kilo  lentils, 1 kilo porridge and 2.5 kilo potatoes to demonstrate what is needed for a five day "£1-00 a day diet" to friends.

So ten days in, how are the results?

After 6 days I posted the adjacent meal in the Slimming World Facebook page. I still had a variety of food, including the week-old lettuce in the fridge.
(The quinoa meal shown is the remaining quarter of what I had already eaten)











After ten days I am still going strong. Today I have a cold so tried to eat healthily: I ate up the very sad celery and very sad green pepper from the fridge, that were" beyond sell by" two weeks ago.  And ate quinoa and lentils. And my last tin of curried mackeral; Oats, and my penultimate egg, then a tin of forest fruit with raw oats. So today I manged my five a day veg/fruit...

But stocks are getting low.. Tomorrow I will eat the bag of sprouting potatoes (having eaten all the nice newer non sprouted ones)

Seven things I have noticed:

1. I am producing far less waste for my waste bin - both less packaging and less old food waste.

2. It has encouraged me to appreciate much more the snacks I do eat when I am out:
I enjoyed healthy snack meal at Settle Hub on Tuesday. J.D. noted the way I pounced on the 1/3 hot-cross bun laden with butter at the Churches Together Lent Meeting on Wednesday,

3. Maybe I go out slightly more often. (The time I have saved by not going to the Coop Garage may end up being spent in extra coffee mornings..).

4. I am getting a bit hungry because I am not having big helpings of main course.. and then maybe "snacking" too much. . E.g. at the above mentioned Church Lent meeting on Wed I had three pieces of buttered hot cross bun and a chocolate biscuit...!!

5. My "five a day" veg/fruit - are getting rather tenuous.
Wednesdays's five a day were:
2 helpings cranberry sauce left from Christmas
1 1/2. helping Lentils from the tin of lentil curry
1/2  . chopped ginger (rather tiny)
1 helping extremely sad lettuce, from the lettuce Jo gave me after our "Blogging in the Hub" yesterday.
 1 helping  potatoes (do potatoes count?)

6. Yesterday I attended a meeting at Langcliffe, the local church where there was to be a talk on Refugees.
Maggie Bruno of Bentham told us of efforts  in Bentham to help refugees
She also goes to Bradford one day a week to help support refugees who are waiting to have their cases heard.
And says what awful stress they live under whilst waiting.
She says they are given £36.95 a week for everything.
(Cooking facilities and electricity is provided) But that £36.95 has to cover food, mobile phone top-ups, clothes.
People who did not want to become refugees.. but  had to travel illegally - to apply to be a refugee you have to be in the country, and usually there is no legal way to enter. Real catch 22

As my stocks get lower I begin to imagine what I will get when I do go to the shops again.
£36.95 won't go far.
But think of people stuck in a poky room/flat with £36.95 to spend on everything.

7.  I read that 1/3 of the food harvested in the world goes to waste and that
If it were a country, food waste would be the world’s third-largest emitter of greenhouse gases. http://bit.ly/2lF3NGV http://bit.ly/2lF3NGV (from A Tesco post)