On the Sunday after Thanksgiving, a beautiful sunny afternoon, I met a friend and her sister in a park along a creek for a lichen walk. I had a small obsession with lichens a few years ago, and I wrote about it in a three-part series for this blog. (Part one, part two, part three.) […]
lichen
Ever since I learned that lichen lives in the city, I can’t stop seeing it. I wrote about lichen two weeks ago in this space—about learning that some lichen thrives in the city and that there are many, many more types of lichen than I’d realized. Since my first phone call with a guy who […]
Yesterday: Urban Lichens, Part 1: OMG! Urban Lichens!, in which we learned that there are lichens in the city. So I’d established that lichens can, sometimes, live in cities. The next step: round up a lichenologist. On a sunny December afternoon, I met up with Manuela Dal Forno, a lichenologist. To be precise, she’s a […]
It was the big new concrete transit center that brought the lichens to town. In September, a huge new structure opened next to the metro station closest to my office. It has three levels, for buses, more buses, and taxis. It was held up by construction delays and disputes. The county and the transit authority […]