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| Ramalina fraxinea (centre) and top left, with cup shaped apothecia at the tips of the plant: Ramalina fastigiata |
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| This photo is taken 100m above the first cattle grid and new barn on the road up Langcliffe Brow and into the sunset. You can see the Ramalina fraxinea bottom left of the picture and the new barn at the cattle grid top left at 3.30pm on 10 December (See note at end about sunset times) |
I walk up the road at the foot of Langcliffe Brow.
After two hours I have I have progressed 1/8 of a mile - 500m -to my final find as the sun is setting - Ramalina fraxinea. at 3.30. at the first corner above the cattle grid.
My performance at Settle Harriers winter handicap in three weeks time is not going to be too good!.
If you find a specimen in
I also notice a green in the wet foliose lichen that is very frilly.
Ramalina fraxinea was once thought of as rare in England but it is increasing in abundance.
This plant (and I later find another small one on the same bough) is growing on a bough of an ash tree fallen on the ground (probably moved from the road), blown down in storm Arwen
This now the 4th 1km square I have found Ramalina fraxinea in out of 29 surveyed in SD86 - and I have found it in two 1km squares adjacent to SD86.
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| 2019 |
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| 2021 |
SD86 do let me know.
The grey thallus is made of belt shaped straps -- in this picture up to 7 cm long and over 1 cm wide - though it can grow to three times this size. They are attached to the branch at one point. I have usually found it on solitary big windswept hawthorns, but in this case it was growing on its name-sake- Ash.
Next to it you can see a smaller Ramalina - Also grey, strap shaped thallus but the apothecia - cup shaped reproductive bodies are at the tips of the thallus. Ramalina fastigiata
elsewhere on the branch was a Ramalina farinacea. but no sign of Evernia prunastri.
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My journey stars at the lowest Horse Chestnut trunk at Langcliffe carpark.
Heavy rain the previous day followed by frost overnight means that the lichens on the trunk are still saturated with water and look very different from when they are dry. Then we they are greener and more swollen.
They look as different as juvenile birds look from adults.
It is hard! Grrrr!
But it also means I notice species I may have missed before.
Lecanora expallens is a grey crust with greyish powdery soredia over the thallus except at the edges. It is normally nondescript and camouflaged - but today the soredia were bright pale lemon:
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| Lecanora expallens |
O think it is Melanohalia laciniatula (brown when dry) - which I found last year on a tree about 100m away - uphill and to the south of Langcliffe Church, and on another a cherry tree in the churhyard 20 m away iin August). I have only found this in about two other places in SD86 too.
In fact I wonder if the plant I have found here is a very new one on this trunk - It is another species which may be spreading.
There is some Phlyctis argena - I noticed that on the Lime on the other side of the road in summer.
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| Phlyctis argena |
Finally a view of the hors chestnut trunk itself
before setting off up the hill.
I start off up the hill.
See the new barn and cattle grid in the distance
See the new barn and cattle grid in the distance
After a while 20 m or so I stop and look at the wall top under the tree and look down to the village. The white lichen is called Aspicilia calcarea (new name: Circinea calcarea)
On top of the wall, with some shade from the tree there are mosses and Black Jelly-lichens - of at least three species. this one is Leptogium gelatinosum (The first time I have recorded it - but not the first time I have found it I am sure - It's just that today I made an effort to name it... Great that brings my total score of species in SD86 to about 159)
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| THe bigger lobes in the centre may be a different species |
On an acid (sandstone) rock, amongst the limestone rocks, in the wall, is what could be a Lecanora campestris. Its jam tart like fruiting bodies point to Lecanora (I awate comments that it might be another sp of Lecanora)
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| Lecanora campestris |
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| Galerina toadstools grows amongst the mosses on the wall top. |
Time to move on. Look up the hill. Next stopping point in 200m: the cattle grid, new barn, and I notice, for the first time, the old barn.
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| In another acid stone in the wall there is "Cigarette ash lichen" - Porpidia tuberculosa. The edge of the thallus has a black rim called the prothallus. This part is made of fungal material only and has no algae in it. |
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| Dunno |
Next some pretty pictures as the sun gets lower, but is now shining
almost perpendicular
to vertical surfaces around me.
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| View across the Ribble valley to the hills and valley above Stackhouse |
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| Fossil in rock in old barn |
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| Clauzadea monticola - probably |
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| A gilled fungus - too high up the tree to get a specimen |
Time to go home!
and 14 Dec at 3:48:27 pm - Earliest Sunset - and today 17th at3:48:53 pm - snd Solstice 21 Dec at
(Note to Judith - My Olympus camera was still set at BST on this day - so I have translated the times so that the times in ths blog are GMT).
Note at Langcliffe at this time of year we are 4min 50 seconds timewise "behind Greenwich - or and -2.274020 units of longitude behind Greenwich - All of Yorkshire is west of Greenwich -
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I had had 17 species entered for SD 8265. I have now brought the total of lichens in this monad to over 32. It is the 29th 1km square (monad) that have recorded out of the 100 squares in hectad SD86. One more monad to go before 31 Dec, to keep up my aim of recording 10 monads a year. (Actually March 2019 was my starting point). with the Leptogium gelatinosum, my total species score for SD86 is 159.
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