#candleflame lichen

[memoriesofthepark]

Little Lichens!!

A selection of the very smallest lichens I found in the park today. Featuring:

Golden-eye lichen 》 Teloschistes chrysophthalmus in images 1-4

Bloodstain lichen 》 Haematomma genus in images 5 & 6

Candleflame lichen 》 Candelaria concolor in images 7 & 8

Well, this my first post in a few weeks. Spring semester started and has me doing a lot of work and today I begin packing for a move. I am quite overwhelmed at the moment and can't make any promises as far as posting consistently or at all until things slow down for me, but we'll see how it goes. Enjoy these bonus pictures of the pond in the meantime. Mush love to all. 🍄💛

Southeast Texas, 26 Jan. 2024

[eregyrn-falls-art]

Some recent encounters with nature!

A Laurel Sphinx moth! I had never seen this kind of moth in person before, and didn't know they were local. This one was sitting on the door of my office building, in a spot where he was likely to be squished. So I got him on my hand, and after the iNaturalist app Seek helped me identify him, I googled awkwardly to find out what they eat (if anything). They do eat, nectar apparently. So I put him on a bush that had some flowers on it.

A gray tree frog, who was hanging out in a bucket we were going to use for water. So we put him on a tree.

Having just gotten this Seek app (by iNaturalist), I tried to identify moss and lichen on a favorite tree I pass while commuting. The app wasn't sure about the moss, although I have previously identified it (with 90% certainty I guess?) as Starry Bristle Moss.

Crystal brain fungus! It's usually found on rotting wood. My guess here is that it is on this tree because of the gash in the bark, and that the bark around the gash is rotting?

A lichen with really cool little cups visible! The app declined to identify it specifically; I'll have to try again today.

Rough Speckled Shield Lichen, according to the app. Shield lichen definitely; unsure if the exact species identification is accurate.

Candleflame Lichen. This is one I'd been wondering about before and couldn't identify. I feel better about the app's identification here. It's a global species.

[lichenaday]

Candelaria fibrosa

Fringed candleflame lichen

images: source | source

[carnegiemuseumnaturalhistory]

City Nature Challenge Recap

With the COVID-19 pandemic hitting, the entire world had to adapt how we participated in this year’s City Nature Challenge. This year we focused on a global collaboration instead of a competition, and physical distancing over public events. We are amazed at the creativity and resilience that we saw – and 2020’s City Nature Challenge results show just how important it was both globally and in the Pittsburgh region.

City Nature Challenge Results

This year, over 40,000 people around the world came together virtually to participate in the City Nature Challenge.  Collectively we shared over 800,000 observations of nature near our homes, and documented 135,435 different species of fungi, plants, and animals. Want to see what was found in any of the more than 200 cities that participated? You can explore at this link.

Pittsburgh’s numbers are incredible too. At the end of the challenge, the Pittsburgh region ended up having 487 observers, 8,281 observations, and 1,225 different species. We almost doubled the number of observers from last year!

The identification phase was a success as well with 419 users helping identify 13,446 different observations. You can explore all the Pittsburgh Region’s observations from this year at this link.

Pete Peng has 1,310 observations and these Candleflame Lichens are beautiful.

Don’t Stop Observing!

We can’t put into words how thankful we are for everyone’s resilience and hard work. The results from this year’s City Nature Challenge prove that even though we have to distance from each other right now, we can still come together to accomplish something awesome.

Check out this observation of a fly from Julia Schwierking!

The City Nature Challenge may be over, but the observations don’t have to end here. Nature is around you 24/7 and waiting to be observed. You can use the iNaturalist app anytime to share what you find!

We’d love to see your observations. Email them to  nature360@carnegiemnh.org or tag us on social media @CarnegieMNH.

[blackyote]

FNV’s Dead Money constantly crashing had me finally throw up my hands and download something new to play: Pillars of Eternity! (I mean I’m still playing Dead Money, but the game’s bugginess is not making it easy.) I’m playing on easy mode since I’m new to this style of roleplaying game and lbr, I usually play in easy mode anyway :)

My character is a nature godlike named Briar. She’s a druid from the Ixamitl Plains.

I usually start my character creation with ~aesthetic~ and let the rest follow from there. Briar was going to be my oc for Elden Ring, and still might be one day, but add some horns and cervine ears and hey, I had myself a godlike! Hers are based off the sable antelope, which is to say the former are tall, dirty bone colored, and sweep back dramatically. (Are they proportionally as large as a sable antelope’s? I’m thinking… not quite. More of a scaled down version.) Her ears are erect and dark brown. I opted for only one set of horns although her in-game avatar has two. I think. [squints]

She stands at 5’5”, minus the horns, and is stout and strong with a bit of a belly. She has big, unusually dark eyes, a button nose, and dark green-brown skin (her family is black). She wears her hair in dreads, swept to the side. As a preteen, rain daisies and desert roses (a poisonous species) began to grow in her hair, and candleflame lichen appeared in patches on her face. The growths could be removed, but swiftly grew back.

Her family belongs to a nomadic tribe, migrating with the seasons and the animals they hunt for sustenance. While her father had some misgivings about a godlike infant, her mother was fiercely protective and considered her a blessing. Luckily the tribe elders agreed. She is the youngest of three girls (her older sisters are named Thistle and Nettle).

I find daemons (from His Dark Materials) to be another useful tool in character creation, helping to fill the gaps in a new personality. At the moment I’m thinking Briar’s would be a ring-tailed lemur. She’s extroverted, impulsive, playful, unambitious, close-bonding, adaptable, and occasionally given to bouts of temper. Growing up in a close-knit community allowed her to make an impression as an individual and not “just” a godlike. It was hard to take such a charismatic, bubbly child for a dark omen. And Briar soon decided, albeit unconsciously, that if people were going to have an opinion about her, it would be for who she was as a person, not for her ears and horns. If her peers liked her, it’s because she was boisterous and instigating fun. If they didn’t like her, it was because she was loud aaand a bit of a bully. Some in the tribe may have found supernatural incidents to blame her for, but once her druid powers emerged, it was hard to argue against her usefulness.

While she became proficient at horseback riding and archery, she didn’t have the passion for it that her sisters did. They were older and already accomplished hunters, and Briar soon realized she preferred helping her mother prepare and cook the meat - over time adding new spices and ingredients that were bought off merchants, creating entire new dishes that her family wholeheartedly consumed. 

When not with her family and friends, Briar was often out in the wilderness alone, except for her druid teacher: Currently unnamed, but the only other druid in their midst. They taught her to detect, draw, and control soul energy, and helped guide her through her initial spirit-shifts (into a lioness, which I headcanon as a quadruped because I hate the anthro avatars I’ve seen). Unnamed druid probably dies, as learning more about her magic is one of the key motivations in Briar leaving the Plains.

Around age 17-18 she traveled alone to the border with Readceras and took up a job as a tavern chef, hoping to save up enough to continue south to Eir Glanfath. But between the tavern owner expecting her to stay “hidden,” and the fact that she wasn’t allowed to experiment with the menu, that stint only lasted as long as she felt was necessary and not a day longer.

When we start the game, Briar has joined a caravan traveling into the Dyrwood…

[hackneyoutdoors]

Perhaps candleflame or common sunburst lichen, but either way, bringing a wee bit of sunlight to even the greyest day. Astonishingly beautiful close up! #lichens #fungi #fungiphotography #mycology #fifthkingdom #fungiofinstagram https://www.instagram.com/p/CIx9-HUhl9K/?igshid=1g85ld7mfhkjl

[humanbyweight]

Candleflame Lichen (Candelaria sp.)