Come with me on a walk round the grounds of St John's Park Church, Sheffield.
The church was used by the charity Green Christian to host a day workshop on 2 March 2024 discussing the many roles and activities of Green Christian. During the lunch break some of the participants explored the surrounds of the church to look at lichens and other wildlife. There is a magical world it you look at it though a hand lens (magnifying glass x 10).
The church is located at SK364875. The war memorial with the Trapelia coarctata lichen is next to it at SK3698757.
(You can see what lichens have been found here in the past if you go to https://britishlichensociety.org.uk/maps/all-species)
Safety warning - don't walk on the horizontal grave stone slabs (which look like a footpath) when wet:- they are slippy. The grassland slopes up above the church giving good views across Sheffield
I was pleased to visit this site - it is next to the Sheffield incinerator which featured in a Green Christian video recently.
The land is owned I think by the council now, not the church;
I include a few pictures of wildflowers and trees in the churchyard at the end of this blog-post
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| Hand lens |
We walked up to the top of the grounds where there is a row of mostly sycamore trees near the path.
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| Parmelia sulcata on tree trunk. It has whitish ridges on the thallus |
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| Maple tree. It's trunk has strong ridges and furrows but they are very narrow . (Unlike sycamore that has flaky bark) You can seel the slippery gravestone slabs beyond. |
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| Buds of the maple |
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Hyperphyscia adglutinata - on several trees. A very tiny foliose lichen.
They don't seem to have any records of it in Sheffield - So it is especially important I send this record in. See map It is much more common in the south of England but is spreading north. however like nearly all the lichens seen today it is one that grows where is a lot of reactive nitrogen air pollution. |
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| Hyperphyscia adglutinata |
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| Lecidella eleochroma |
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| Punctellia subrudecta |
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| Centre: Candelaria concolor tiny frilly yellow lichen |
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| Candelaria concolor |
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| Goat Willow - male catkins |
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Two benches at the top of the grass area
provided good habitat for lichens |
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| Melanalexia subaurifera on bench |
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One of the sycamore tree trunks at the top
had a really dense covering of Physcia adscendens
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| Erythricium aurantiacum |
When lichenologists have finished looking at lichens, and feel that lichens are not obscure enough, they then then start looking at Lichenicolous fungi - fungi that grow on lichens.
The grey leafy lichen with helmed shaped lobes is Physcia adscendens and the pale peach pink orange balls growing on it are the lichenicolous fungus Erythricium aurantiacum.
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| Candelariella reflexa the yellow powder. |
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| While we were outside the others were inside choosing a variety of items from our shared lunch. |
The next three pictures are of a crustose lichen (slight pinkish grey crus) growing on the slabs on top of the wall round the wall memorial, that I looked at with Catherine at the end of the conference
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| Trapelia coarctata growing on the flat capstones on the wall round the wall memorial. |
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| Trapelia coarctata growing on the flat capstones of the wall round the wall memorial. |
The divisions on this scale are 0.1 mm. These brown discs with a white rim that is jagged on the inside are the fruiting bodies of the lichen.
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On the ground - path near the church - Lecanora muralis rather wet.
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| I think this fungus may be a species of Omphalina and it is growing on Didymodon insulanus moss which was growing over the path |
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| More Omphalina nearby. I think the moss is a different species of Didymodon here, because the leaves are straight. |
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| The incinerator opposite the church |
Before the conference started I had a walk round the churchyard looking for wildflowers. March is not the best time .. as wildflowers from 2023 have died, and only a few early spring species have started to grow. Also it was a wet morning. But in a quick look round this is what I found:
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