Lichen clings to rock, like - well, lichen. It eats it, dissolving it for nutrients.
I was trying to explain to my hubs about some of the lichen I had seen and had lost my words. Kinda like lichen, like it was lichenously clinging to the tree. Needless to say he didn't stop playing with lichen for the next fifteen minutes, to the point I wanted to hit him with a lichen covered stick.
'Did you know that they had to get rid of the lichen on Mt Rushmore as it was eating away at the features of the presidents?' I said.
"Yes" says he. 'It was removing their lichen-ness to the presidents'. Boom.
In the forest this sage green lichen clings to rocks everywhere. Sometimes we forget to see it: we see river, gorge, rocky outcrop but fail to see what lives upon it. But to notice opens up a whole world of beauty.
'Yeah, I'm lichen it" says the hubs.
It covers 7 percent of the Earth's surfaces, from powdery white to tangerine orange. When it grows on mineral substrates it slowly decomposes it, gradually turning it to soil. There is no forest without lichen.
It's all so very green in the Otways forest. Sometimes you look and just see 'green' but there's so much that makes up that whole - bright green fern fronds uncurling to a more brown tinged green, different greens for each stage of growth of the various types of ferns.
Some greens are slippery, coating steps as you carefully clamber up bridges. Some are green tainted water, reflecting the forest above or thick with decaying leaves. Some are blue green old man's beard tendriling off branches or the bridge wires.
There's the blue green of blue gums, the darker eucalyptus green that is a paint colour, a descriptor for interior design.
There's moss green, yellowy green, muddy green, wattle leaf green, flowering sundew green, and sometimes even green mushrooms, olivey green.
It's all so green you feel your heart greening, a kind of softening, an openness that greets the forest with joy.
And then there's my husband green, always waiting ahead of me smiling, as I stop to take photos and gush over moss, fungi, lichen and fern. My green man of the green forest.
'Hey babe,' I say. 'I'm a lichen this walk with you'.
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