Author Archives: momdude

When talking about the lichen that I’ve discovered growing on “the big tree in the back yard,” the question again came up – what kind of a tree is it, exactly?

I’ve tried a couple of these free phone apps that will try to identify plants, but they’ve never gotten beyond “tree” before, except for one that got as far as “olive.” Since I don’t see any olives on it (and there are olive trees all over SoCal – this ain’t one of them!) I thought that was useless information.

Actually…

I downloaded the PlantNet app. It looks at various things like the bark…

…and leaves…

…and thought that it might be a green ash tree. But it’s not feeling super confident about that analysis, maybe one in four odds that it’s correct.

Then I tried the Seek app. It takes a look at the whole plant and as you move the camera around it starts trying to tie the pieces together (bark, size, leaves, flowers, etc) to come up with an estimate based on plant taxonomy. Remember that from sixth grade biology? Domain, Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, Genus, Species? (Neither did I, had to google it. I mean, I knew the concept, but the order and so on? Pffft!)

It pretty quickly established that our subject was part of the Olive Family. WHO KNEW??!!

Then things clicked!

I’m not 100.000% sure this app is right, but I think we can conclusively say that it’s some sort of ash tree! So where does that clue take us on the Interwebs? Here!

Looking through the various types of ash trees, I’m not 100% sure either the green ash or the velvet ash description is perfect. In particular, my tree gets some odd new growth every spring, and I don’t see anything that looks like that. And most of the descriptions in the article show seed pods that are unlike anything I’ve seen on this tree.

So, an ash tree of some sort, 99.99% sure. PROBABLY a Velvet Ash, about 90%+ sure, possibly a green ash.

It’s not moss.

It’s lichen.

Does it have or will it have fruiting bodies?

This section here is like a power coating, but up close and blown up (click on the image) there are shades of green unseen before.

Here there’s some sort of structure that I didn’t see before, especially across that ridge of bark in the middle. It looks like little circles or pox marks.

More of it here, along with some yellow patches.

Lots of yellow here, along with clusters of those circular, pox-mark like areas.

Another bright yellow patch along with some of the green stuff. I wonder if the “pox mark” areas here were brighter green when wet but are now reverting to brown and/or clear as they dry, but leaving that structure visible?

Speculation. But if I get a chance I’ll go take some close ups tomorrow of the non-lichen covered section to see if it’s all over the tree bark or just where the lichen is.

Junior botanists of the world – UNITE!

After pointing out that the deluge had brought out a green covering to the big tree in the back yard, and after foolishly referring to it as “moss,” I’ve been told that it’s more likely to be “lichen.” My thanks to my high school friend James on FaceBook (dude, do you realize that it’s been almost fifty years?!) and Jemima Pett here for the information!

The sunny side of the tree. No lichen (or moss) seen.

This is what I thought ALL of the bark looked like until earlier this week.

Rough texture, but… brown. (BTW, if anyone can help me identify what kind of tree this is I would appreciate it. I’ve tried a couple of those “plant ID” apps but they’ve just said, “Huh? What? Moi?”)

The green color of the lichen on the shady side is still obvious, but the color has started to fade from when it was soaked. I did find this article from the US Forest Service, which has a line that indicates that my initial guess might not be totally out of left field when I speculated about the color change and appearance being “activated” by the rain.

When a lichen is dry, its color is usually gray or colored like the fungal cells on the upper cortex. When a lichen is wet, those cells become transparent, and the algal cells underneath get a chance to show their vibrancy.

Green algae generally give the lichen a bright green color when wet…

I wonder how much of the color difference might be due to lighting and how the iPhone’s camera sensor tries to “help” by making some processing decisions with the raw data.

I also wonder about the “fruiting bodies” that Jemima asked about. I tried doing a Google image search for “lichen fruiting body images” – that was a mistake. I got one or two lichen pictures and hundreds of rather graphic and disturbing images of a skin condition called “lichen planus.” 🤮🤢

However, on closer examination of the green spots above…