I have a lot of love for the forms and colours of these beautiful rock dwellers. A little lichen spring green.
All images © Karen McRae

I have a lot of love for the forms and colours of these beautiful rock dwellers. A little lichen spring green.
All images © Karen McRae
I too love the lichens! Great shots of these tough little rock reducers. : )
Thanks Wicker, what’s not to love?!
A wonderful selection – and such an array of colours!
Lichen variety is quite astonshing, isn’t it? Thank you Louis.
The air must be really nice and clean where you are.
Mostly! 🙂
We have the odd smog day in the summer…
Great photos! And I agree with schietree…you have great air quality.
Thank you Elizabeth.
The colours remind me of William Morris wallpapers. Gorgeous.
Interesting! He was very nature inspired. Thank you. 🙂
Gorgeous images, Karen. Are those all local? They are quite diverse in form.
Thank you, Graham.
All of these lichen are on a little island in Mud Lake (a small city-lake near the river)
Oh, you killed off my plan to put Lichen’s photos in a context
[they are still surviving by scraping a living] 😀
But you showed off them thriving in vivid color = my photos
completely lost color. 😀
(By the way, I can’t understand, why I can’t click [Like] ??? )
Oh go ahead and post your lichen, there is room in the blogosphere for more! 🙂
Such rich color and variation! Not to mention the patterns and textures.
They are wonderfully intriguing! thank you.
Love the lichen! And the green for spring. These images are stunning because it’s as if each is it’s own universe of interesting forms I explore. Wonderful work, Karen! 🙂
Thanks so much, Polly. I’m happy they are of interest. 🙂
Beautiful series. I have a love for lichens too. 🙂
Thank you Inga. 🙂
Love lichens too, I even studied them in prehistoric times. You create great photo’s from the lichen-wolrd!
Oh that’s really interesting Bente. I understand they can be remarkably long-lived!
Thanks
Beautiful colors and shots! When I was a kid, I used to experiment seeing in lichens geographical maps of imaginary countries. Nowadays it is still the first impulse 🙂 , this micro-macro game.
I completely relate to that Marija. There is a kind of lichen that is called Map Lichen precisely for how it looks!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Map_lichen
Oh! Thanks for the information and the link 🙂
You are welcome! Of course it’s probably more fun to say “Rhizocarpon geographicum”
absolutely beautiful! The fifth image is so lovely. Karen, you’ve got such an eye!
Marina, thank you so much. Sincerely, I’m glad you like them.
Green… my new favorite color. Such beautiful mini-scapes.
Green is a great colour!
Thanks David.
Such wonderful colors and textures. I see other worlds in these images. I love the 7th one in particular.
They make for interesting abstracts very open to interpretation. Thank you Lemony.
It’s more enjoyable to do spring greening than spring cleaning.
Steve Schwartzman
http://portraitsofwildflowers.wordpress.com
Yes, I agree! 🙂
Wonderful images.
Did you know that archaeologists use these sometimes for dating rock features, like tipi rings, that have no other way of doing so? They need to establish local growth rates, which is often done from headstones in a cemetery, and then apply those measurements to the size of the ones growing on archaeological stones. Its useful for a few hundred years, as they grow pretty slowly in many environments.
That is very interesting, Ephem. Thank you for sharing that information.
Great shots Karen. I love the variations of green you’ve captured so well!
Thank you Marina, It’s the variations that really caught my eye.
Wow, these are stunning! Each one unique, each one with such an intricate pattern…Lovely.
Thank you JP. They are quite diverse, aren’t they?
I love Lichen too.. always such interesting shapes.. Nice job Karen.
Thanks Helen. 🙂
Good afternoon, Karen – the little strand of green rosettes in the fifth pic are beautiful – the variation of color – hard to believe there are so many colors of green!
K
Hi Kathleen, there are so many shades of green in lichen. I think that and the texture make them pretty fascinating. Thanks!
Lichens are amazing little life forms aren’t they? Algae blending with fungus blending with rock. All great photos, but I feel the 3rd one feeding my heart with breath. Beautiful work as always Karen.
Yes, they are amazing. What a great comment, Noel. Thank you.
Lichens growing on rocks, trees and mailboxes all hold their own charm. I love the lichens and your photos.
Thank you, Shez.
Wonderful shapes,
Jim
Thank you.
These are really neat. I love the colors & shapes.
Hi Michael, thanks for commenting!
Beautiful!
🙂
I LoVe these so much! I adore lichen! And moss. And tiny biospheres. I didn’t realise that lichen grows on the south side and moss on the north, if they have a chance, a choice. It could just be misinformation from me though. Tread carefully. I am no Wikipedia! 🙂 🙂 🙂
Hi Gigi, thanks for your lichen enthusiasm. 🙂
Much appreciated.
Can’t help ‘lichen’ them, Karen! Wait a min…your pronunciation might be different from ours and you won’t get it! Oh well! Terrible joke anyway! I blame my father-in-law!
Cheers
John
Same pronunciation! Bad pun understood. 🙂
Thanks John!
A wonderful variety of patterns and textures!
Thanks F&B.