Botanising in Blean Village

This is a sort of revision for the practical walk we did earlier in the evening.

For example we looked a a couple of sedges. The first was the fairly common Hairy Sedge, Carex hirta, and the second was Grey Sedge, Carex divulsa,

Hairy Sedge, Carex hirta, has long sparse hairs on the edges

The Grey Sedge, Carex divulsa, was found in a hedge bottom along the pavement, on the way back close to the village hall. This has long narrow droopy dark green leaves in loose (dense, surely??) tussocks of many stems. The inflorescence is spaced out small clumps of nutlets, with a thin needle-like bract, which is shorter than the inflorescence as a whole.

Lichen on the Blean

It seemed to be quite a coincidence that I stopped to take a photo of a fairly obvious lichen that proved to be one of the key species noted in the area, Thelotrema lepadinum. There are about 20 official records in TR on the NBN database, all in The Blean or down towards Mersham.

It has an unusual appearance as the apothecial bounday membrane is separated from the thallus wall, and appears as a papery membrane inside the throat of the volcano-like apothecia. It is regarded in East Kent as an indicator of an ancient woodland site - possibly. There are no records from West Kent at present. It is much commoner in the north and west of the UK.

The above photo was taken from quite a large well-established patch.

Here is a newer patch appearing on a fairly smooth-barked tree:

Lichens on trees at Yalding Fen

Had a lovely day with the Ash Project and Ishpi Blatchley looking at lichens on trees, particularly Ash Trees, wood and other substrates.

This is one of the common bark lichens we found, Parmelia sulcata, with its exuberant soralia developed from pseudocyphellae obviously in the centre of the thallus, its lovely grey lobes, brown to black on the undersurface.

This I think is a Physcia species, with the narrow lobes, in this case growing on wood, the hand-rail of a footbridge between the central pond and the marsh with the duckboard path. I think it is quite likely to be Physcia tenella, but I couldn't see any developed apothecia, or indeed any of the tiny black spots or pycnidia that you often see in pictures. The cilia on the edges of the lobes are quite visible, so it could perhaps be P. adscencens or P. tenella.

In the more established part of the lichen, the soredia make it look much more fuzzy.

This is an interesting photo of another section of the bridge timbers, with a grey foliose lichen with pseudocyphellae on the lobe to the bottom left of the photo. There are also some tiny black pimples on a surface in front, on the other section of timber.

Here are three different lichens on the top surface of the main bridge timber rail:

Evernia prunastri on an oak or willow perhaps

Usnea?

Grey lichen with black jam tart apothecia, perhaps Lecidella elaeochroma (Ach.) M.Choisy, slightly overgrown by a Physcia species, and with some limited black margins to be seen.

This is the white paint lichen, Phlyctis argena, on one of the trees along the driveway into Great Comp garden. In this instance I couldn't see see soredia (the usual description is soredia abundant or rare) or any apothecia (usual description is rare, but if found they should be dark grey, pruinose, with large muriform spores).