Alan Silverside's lichen pages - photographs of British lichens

Site History
This site was set up in January 2003, originally as a means of sharing my photographs from the courses on lichen identification run by Brian and Sandy Coppins (at Kindrogan Field Centre, Perthshire, Scotland, April 2002 and 2003), but with awareness that, at that time, there was apparently no other website attempting to provide a general set of images of British lichens. It was was hosted on the University of Paisley (now University of the West of Scotland) life and environment teaching server, at www-biol.paisley.ac.uk/research/Asilverside/lichens/index.html, and was kept and extended as a teaching resource illustrating lichen diversity and as a resource for fellow lichenologists and other external users. Further pictures were added as time and inclination allowed.

As this hosting arrangement effectively came to an end, the primary site was re-established and extended here at lastdragon.org. It remains a companion to my UWS BIODIVERSITY REFERENCE teaching resource, which is also mostly being transferred to this server. Personal copyright is retained in all materials posted here. I have a considerable and growing backlog of other species awaiting loading, so it is worth checking back here from time to time (check News and updates).

Copyright exists in all images and other material on this site. Requests for non-commercial use of images in the fields of conservation and education will generally be viewed positively — for a summary of what you can do and not do, see the site Conditions of Use.


Heterodermia leucomela, Cornwall

Site Format
Names now follow Smith, C.W., et al. 2009, The lichens of Great Britain and Ireland. I have added very brief recognition notes to each species page, partly as an aide-mémoire for myself, but these cannot substitute for consultation of a good identification guide. Short descriptions, distribution maps and additional photographs of most species may be found in F.S. Dobson's excellent Lichens, an illustrated guide to the British and Irish species. The names used in edition 5 of this book (2005) mostly match those used here, and, where not, the 'Dobson' names are included on the index pages. The recognition notes include references to published descriptions and photographs (by no means comprehensive!). Details of these are listed on the References page.

The site is restricted to British species but I have used a small number of photographs taken outside Britain when they better illustrate the species concerned.

Locality format is generally place and county, but note that "county" refers to the traditional counties and may not correspond to current administrative units. Where there is a conflict between a vice-county (as used in vice-comital recording systems) and a current "county", vice-comital definitions have been followed.

As the aim is to provide good-sized illustrations of (where possible) reasonable quality, I regret that pages will be slow to load on dial-up internet connections. Optimum screen resolution is now 1280×1024, reflecting the general move to higher definition flat-screen monitors, though 1024×768 settings will continue to be appropriate. Page coding is simple, in good, old-fashioned HTML 3, and should be readable by any browser without need for plug-ins. However, rendition is somewhat better in Internet Explorer as compared with Firefox (text quality, text layouts and visible alt tags to images). I do not use pop-ups, cookies or javascript gimicks and no material is brought from exterior servers to cause loading delays. (This is a Google-Analytics-free zone!)

Photography
Lichen photography is a challenge, requiring care, refinement of technique and time that is not available when one is part of an organised group of people. Most of the Kindrogan 2002/2003 photographs were taken with a digital camera, but often with little time and the camera wobbling on the end of a monopod with little depth of field in limited light. The definition isn't that good in many of them but I am keeping them as aids to help me remember the species seen, and a (very) few photographs I am rather pleased with.

As opportunity allows, I am adding photographs taken with more control over the conditions (and, sadly, more duff ones too) and I am slowly replacing some of the poorer examples. I have experimented with various cameras, but currently I use the excellent Canon EOS 7D as my main camera. Many of the more recent photographs have been with the Olympus SP-560UZ, which is less cumbersome, versatile and generally excellent, but which has a serious weakness in rendering greenish-yellow colours (Lecanora sulphurea, Xanthoparmelia conspersa, etc.) and pale grey-green (e.g. Ramalina, Usnea). The Fuji S100FS has better colour rendition than the Olympus (and probably the Canon) and has given good results, but it is also rather cumbersome when dealing with lichens in awkward positions. I use it intermittently.

Wicken Fen
For a few years I have been fungal recorder for Wicken Fen, Cambridgeshire (NNR and National Trust reserve and one of the surviving fragments of the former Great Fen that occupied a large area of Cambridgeshire, Huntingdonshire and Lincolnshire inland from the Wash). More recently, the lichenised fungi have been added to my remit. Consequently I would be very pleased to receive any reliable records for lichenised or non-lichenised fungi that Fen visitors might have tucked away in notebooks. The most recent list of non-lichenised fungi of Wicken Fen is still on the UWS teaching server at http://www-biol.paisley.ac.uk/research/Asilverside/Wickenfungi.html, but it is now usually off-line and it also requires a LOT of updating. In the fullness of time I shall add the current lichen list and transfer it to here at lastdragon.org.

The Banner Graphic
Identities, from left to right: Flavoparmelia caperata, Leptogium gelatinosum, Calicium viride, Cladonia bellidiflora, Lichenomphalia velutina, Xanthoria parietina.

Thumbnail index to species
A–B	C	D–K	L–M	N–O	P	Q–T	U–Z + photobionts
Lichenicolous fungi (non-lichenised fungi growing on lichens)
Text index to all species (no thumbnails)

Links: a haphazard collection relating to images, identification and ecology
References cited on individual species pages
FAQ: musings, technical terms explained and other miscellanea (under development)
Conditions of use
News and updates

lastdragon.org

Photographs of Scottish and other British lichens