Underwater scene?
Seaweed and anemones?
The old oak's lichen!
Staying Home has meant wandering around our field day after day. I'd photographed all the wildflowers I could find. Then, one afternoon, I happened into the world of lichen. My timing was lucky because they're drying out fast. My iPhone 8 doesn't have great focus, but it's not bad!
The small orange splotches drew my eye and camera. The enlarged image surprised me -- I didn't know what I was seeing...moss? fungus? lichen? But don't lichen just grow on rocks? Lichen it is, and there's lots to learn, but I'm satisfied just knowing about the basic shapes in front of me: fruticose, the leafless, shrublike ones; foliose, the ones with leafy structure, including the little orange platelets that look like anemones; and crustose, the flat ones often seen on rocks. They're not bad for the trees. They're actually algae and fungus living in mutual symbiosis, not parasitically. Bottom line: They're beautiful!
When I focused on the trunk instead of the branches, I found all these fibrous, hairy filaments curling their way through the bark's passageways. I haven't figured out what these are yet.
There's a metaphor in this. From the distance, it's just one tree of many. Closer and it's a tree with icky scaly stuff on it. Get really close and there's rich beauty. Sort of like with people.
ReplyDeleteI love that! Thanks!
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