My Golden Eye
Today the paths were littered with fallen twigs, thinner than fingers. Some of them wear a gem...
Lichen from Heaven
The wind blew my parka’s hood off my head yesterday. But no complaints. That wind brought down treasures from the tree tops. Today the paths were littered with fallen twigs, thinner than fingers. And some of them wear a gem.
The gem is a lichen that grows on twigs, Gold-eye Lichen. It’s a sort of special friend of mine, both for its color and because it’s one lichen that I know at a glance, even before I reach down to pick it up. That cluster of gold specks calls out to me.
Golden gem
Bring it home. Put it under the eye of the microscope. See the spot made of flecks of gold, the total patch no bigger than the stone in a ring.
Magnified, a flock of colorful, upfacing disks come into focus. Golden tentacles rim the yolk-orange disks like the snakes of a Medusa. Nobody knows why this lichen has those tentacles. And only people who have looked at it under magnification have seen them at all, because they are tiny.
The sexy bits
The discs are called apothecia. These are the reproductive structures of the lichen. In the apothecia, invisibly small spores are born. The spores can float away on a breeze. If they land on a suitable branch they may become new Gold-eye Lichens.
I have never found Gold-eye Lichen that covered an entire twig. It’s always just a spot, like a gemstone. Here is a Gold-eye growing on top of another kind of lichen, Physcia. The photo is taken through a microscope — the tip of your little finger could cover up all the lichen in this picture.
To me, this Gold-eye looks like a dragon working its way across an unearthly white landscape. I can’t look at it and not see a mythical animal.
Of course, the landscape is not unearthly at all. Lichen is abundant on earth. It is an ancient life form, and it covers 7 percent of the world’s land. Lichens grow on rocks, dirt, tree bark, wood, mosses, other lichens, buildings, tombstones, sidewalks, metal, plastics, glass, and cloth. Some kind of lichen is living its life near you right now.
Scientific name
The scientific name of Gold-eye Lichen is Teloschistes chrysophthalmus. The first word, Teloschistes, is the genus and is a name it shares with several other lichens. The second word, chrysophthalmus, identifies its species. This word means "golden eye":
chrys = gold
ophthalmus = eye
It's a perfect translation into scientificese of the common English name. For myself, I like the common English name, Gold-eye Lichen, which seems to suggest something about this lichen’s soul.
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Thank You for this article. I am trying to learn a little about lichen this year so this is especially interesting. Your microscope photos are beautiful.