Paul Nordberg
My activities & loves
Paul Nordberg
My activities & loves
Monk's-hood lichen (Hypogymnia physodes) is common in this area.
Because it is light gray, its presence is unobtrusive amid the vast spread of common greenshield lichen. It took me a long time to recognize the distinction. The overall sizes and shapes of the lobes are quite different, though, once you stop to look at them. The ability to enlarge images proves to be vey helpful in this field of study.
Unlike some other labels here, the name of the Common script lichen (Graphis scripta) is easily understood, since it (1) is widespread, (2) has lines that look like some foreign handwriting, possibly from some exotic ancient culture, and (3) is a lichen. "Common script lichen" may be a conflation of a few species.
I found this one close to where it has been reported before, in the Bradley Palmer State Park, along the Ipswich River.
"Powder-tipped shadow lichen?" – Whoever thinks up the common names for lichens is as fanciful as the branding department of an interior paint manufacturer or the marketing division of a dietary supplement maker. The scientific name Phaeophyscia adiastola is unapproachable, even for those who, like me, studied Latin and Greek for years.
Whatever you call it, its pale green color fits unobtrusively into the vast scatter of common greenshield lichen around it. I passed by it countless times until yesterday I first noticed the clusters of rimmed dark disks.
Lipstick powderhorn lichen (Cladonia macilenta) has red caps on its stalks, like its cousin British soldier lichen. These are very small, only a few mm high, so one needs to look very closely to see the tips.
The species has the confusing preference of growing on dead wood, as it is here. That is a very unlichen-like proclivity. Mosses and fungi need organic matter to feed on, but lichens provide for themselves in this regard. It took me quite a while to pick out this group, though I pass it nearly every day.
The name "smokey-eye" is curious, because this lichen has striking discs of blue – "eyes" – on a smokey background. Well, some might say the discs were bluish-gray with dark rims. (I recommend enlarging the thumbnail image shown here.)
P. albocaerulescens is a common lichen. I found this example along the Ipswich River, where it has been reported before.
I found this sulfur dust lichen (Chrysothrix chlorina) close to the Ipswich River. It has been reported before along that river, and pictures of it are common enough that I recognized it immediately when I saw it.
(I must say, there are fuzzy blobs of all sorts of colors a bit like this one that are much more confusing… lichen, spray paint, or creeping disease?)
"A very common lichen, Physcia millegrana has been described as the most pollution-tolerant macrolichen in eastern North America."
Here, it is widespread over a variety of stones across the Old South Cemetery, which dates from the Colonial era.
It is possible that the species is not P. millegrana, which is generally reported to grow on trees, but one of its close cousins.
Standard American references speak of Candelaria concolor as being "lemon yellow to mustard yellow, paling to yellow green in shade." Other descriptions of the species, especially a British report and a photograph by Stephen Sarnoff, show decidedly green specimens.
It is established that C. concolor is common in this area, and I have found frequent instances with hues like those shown here. Altogether, the circumstances leave me with the suboptimal choice of believing that the specimen shown here is a variant within the species, or that it is of some other species, unusual and not reported as present in this area. For lack of a better approach or laboratory facilities, I am accepting the former, for now at least.
I believe that the white lichen is Lecanora pulcaris.
Wikipedia notes, "Members of the [Lecanora lichen] genus have roughly circular fruiting discs (apothecia) with rims."
If you enlarge the image shown here from its thumbnail size, you will see that the disks have reddish brown cores. The picture matches closely with one by Stephen Sarnoff, included in the listing by the Consortium of Lichen Herbaria. Other specimens have areas with similar dark reddish brown cores, next to areas where the cores have only faint tinges of coloration.
Similar bands are pervasive in this area. Nearly all young and other smooth-barked trees have tiger coats with stripes from white to light gray. Most often, dark discs aren't evident on the growths, but that is only what one would expect in a reproductive phase. (What proportion of the humans of the planet are visibly pregnant at any given moment?) At this time, my impression is that all of these are variants of a single species. However, I will continue to explore other possibilities. The genus has many species very similar to each other.
Pixie cup lichen (Cladonia pyxidata) is tiny. The "cups" in the picture could not hold as much as a drop of water apiece.
I must confess that not long ago I collected another sample but discarded it, thinking, This is a moss, not a lichen. I am learning, little by little!
In the speciment shown here, the cupped stalks of the apothecia – reproductive bodies – are about 3 mm high. It came from a shaded, low-lying and silted area of sand dunes. The particles in the lower part of the image are grains of sand. Not far away, other examples are growing up the bottoms of pines.
Moonglow lichen (sometimes "Golden moonglow") (Dimelaena oreina) grows "on steeply inclined surfaces of hard siliceous rocks", the Consort of Lichen Herbaria reports. Another source notes that it occurs "on rocks and tombstones in exposed areas." It is common hereabouts.
In a new and confusing area of study, I have found this example to follow the script exactly and look just like the pictures in the books.
The name moonglow is evidently derived from the radiating appearance, called "areolate" and "radiate-plicate" in the language of lichenology. The form reminds me a bit more of the rays and halos shown in old paintings around the heads of holy persons and angels.
The cinder lichen (Aspicilia cinerea) is aptly named.
In the image here, the large gray shapes are cinder lichen, with smaller moonglow lichens and perhaps bits of coal dust lichen around them.
After some head-scratching, I will report a couple of specimens on slate as seemingly belonging to this species. Both of the slate-based growths are surrounded by striking halos of olive green, which possibly fits with some some printed references but no images that I can find. In the example shown here, there are bits of rock greenshield lichen scattered around.
There are various technical tests that could be made, beginning with simple chemical assays. I am holding off on moving to that level, however. I am feeling like a beginning bird-watcher who has learned to tell a crow from a robin from a turkey, but doubts that that his abilities are quite up to a top-line set of binoculars. More likely, a firmer grasp of lichen anatomy would be the best next step.
"Coal dust lichen" is a common term for a common lichen, aptly named. Beyond that, there is considerable variation and evolution in the story.
Acarospora privigna is also called Polysporina simplex. The Consortium of Lichen Herbaria reports that it is found "on acidic [i.e. siliceous] or carbonaceous rocks, in sunny, open sites." Lichens of North America reports that "Polysporina urceolata is a related species on limestone." That is a neat fit for the substrate shown here, but I have not been able to find a geographical range described for urceolata. Simplex is widely reported to be found in this area.
Though its bushy appearance resembles that of Usnea subfloridana, noted below, this lichen caught my eye with its differing texture and tree-trunk location – I have only seen the former on twigs. Initially, my impression was that it was Usnea hirta. After microscopic examination and further research, I believe now that it is more likely Boreal oakmoss lichen (Evernia mesomorpha). Both are present in this area.
At the top of the image, there are a few lobes of Flavoparmelia caperata, the ubiquitous common greenshield lichen.
An earlier version of this website had a lot of material on cooking. I won't start time travel backwards, but I will report one variant on a very common dish that is worthy of note: chicken soup.
Nearly all of the chicken soup recipes I find today include an onion and carrots. The recipe here has neither. It is for a hearty dish that might be considered closer to a stew than a soup. It is a chicken-focused recipe, not a vegetable soup with a broth base.
The key ingredients are a couple of chicken thighs, diced (or less good, a breast), a quarter cup of peeled garlic cloves, some parsley, and a quarter cup of mirin – a rice wine used in Japanese cooking. The mirin adds savoriness, one of five basic tastes.
I agree with the common inclusion of noodles of some sort, or rice.
As the Consortium of Lichen Herbaria notes, "Candelariella vitellina is a common and widespread species."
The example shown here – the light green growth – is one of a number on granite and other hard stones in the center of Ipswich. Their age might be measured in decades, certainly not in centuries.
The smaller, lighter-colored growths are apparently moonglow lichens, the dark green an unidentified moss.
My identification of this lichen – the dark olive growth – is soft, without the benefit of expert knowledge or common chemical tests. The genus Melanelixia, to which I am tentatively assigning it, is a relatively recent one, the subject of ongoing research by specialists.
The visual match is an excellent one, however, for images from the Consortium of Lichen Herbaria. Its location fits neatly within the range cited by the Consortium. (I wish I could triangulate to the authoritative Lichens of North America by Brodo et al., but since the experts are painting evolving nonidentical pictures of the taxonomy, it is hard to match both simultaneously. The teams have overlapping membership, and the variants have much in common.)
The surrounding pale green blotches in the image are common greenshield lichens.
My discovery of new lichens seems to be proceeding apace, facilitated by breaking weather, learning what to look for, and encouragement from a bit of recent success.
Xanthoria parietina was first described by Carl Linnaeus in 1753. In North America, it shows a strong preference for coastal habitats, rarely appearing further inland.
As always with things lichen, my beginner's state of knowledge is very modest, in an area where experts may be unsure or disagree. I am relying in my identification on the fact that Xanthoria is well known, and multiple reports that it is common along the seashore of New England.
A few weeks later, I found extensive, even overwhelming growths of X. parietina in headstones in Old South Cemetery, some four miles away. The removed presence of this one on a hardwood trunk is curious.
Now that the stubborn ice of the last months has melted, I have been looking again for lichens during my daily run through the dunes of Crane Beach. There are two that are extremely widespread, common greenshield lichen and reindeer lichen. I had nearly decided that that was it: the sandy soil is almost devoid of nutrients, and whatever grows needs to be salt-tolerant. It is a very specialized ecosystem of a small number of species. Better look in a different place if I want to find something different!
But I was mistaken. Today I came across a new one. I have learned that appearances may be deceiving, but the looks of this one fits classic lichen characteristics very well, on the surface of things. Lichens are made mostly of a fungus, of filamentary composition and usually very light in color, and a lesser bulk of an alga, usually green or less often blue. This growth is a thready, light-green structure
It is clearly of the genus Usnea, most likely of the species subfloridana (I decided subsequently).
I am excited.
I enjoy a game of solitaire as part of my evening ritual, just as at other times I enjoy a crossword puzzle (of the British cryptic variety, rewarding cleverness, not the American style, measuring knowledge of trivia from the mass entertainment media). It is a fifteen-minute interlude in a life filled with tasks whose duration is measured in months.
I play a game called Freecell, as did my mother. Heaven knows where she learned it. It was popularized by Microsoft, but I'm sure she didn't get it there. She used a deck of traditional playing cards, as do I. I find it's as useful to keep my hands busy as my mind! – The one in the picture is six years old, two or three times the expected lifetime of an electronic device.
Freecell, unlike the much more popular solitaire games of Klondike and Pyramid, is almost always winnable, and calls for some skill and attention. In fact, it calls for enough of one's attention that other thoughts must be set aside. That is not a bad pre-bedtime condition.
Recently, I looked around to see if there were other solitaire games winnable with skill. I came across Accordion, which comes in different varieties. For a long time, it was considered nearly unwinnable, until somebody figured out an approach that almost always works. It does call for much concentration, so is still widely considered very difficult.
Accordion, unlike most other solitaire games, is not an exercise in sorting, but of matching and collapsing – hence the name. As such, it calls for different skills.
Unfortunately, I found little of value on strategy for the game. There is not even an accepted system of notation for recounting it, as there is for chess or bridge. So, I have created my own brief guide 
and notation system.
The sample game I describe is a relatively easy one. I invite comment.
Accordion does take some space, which is a challenge for someone who tends to build up clutter on the kitchen table. But adjusting that habit would not be a bad thing, either.
Last winter was very mild. The ground barely froze. I was able to get a jump, months early, on a pile of spring chores that is usually overwhelming.
This winter has offered unrelenting cold. The amount of snow has not been great, nor have there been extremely low temperatures. But the days when the thermometer cracks freezing have been few, and when they've come, often with gusty winds. My last monthly gas bill was over $500, far above the norm.
It's January. One should expect such things. I do have more than enough indoor activities, and have been getting better at having a balance of things that require thinking and things that don't. (A warm day, or even a warm afternoon, would be nice for a couple of pending tasks… one will come.)
The snows at least have been pretty ones.
Though early January morning weather has been offering a wind chill factor of 0° F, it turns out that there have been good opportunities for field observation, prompted by my new lichen book.
The growth here is a common greenshield lichen, one of the most prevalent varieties globally and locally. It is a symbiotic combination of a fungus (Parmelia sulcata) and a green microalga (Trebouxia).
The microalga component has the capability of photosynthesis, deriving nutrient energy from the air and sunlight. It is notable here that the lichen displays a greenish tint even in mid-winter, in contrast to most of the deciduous plant life around it, now dead, brown and yellow.
The cells of the fungus are filamentary. As my reference notes, these threadlike structures weave into and around the alga, providing a firm base and skin. The durability of the composite is evident in the photograph. The lichen is still present and evidently alive, hanging loosely around the branch, long after the tree itself has died, the bark has dropped, and the wood itself is in marked decay.
© 2025 Paul Nordberg