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 has been hosted on the University of Paisley (now University of the West of Scotland) life and environment teaching server at http://www-biol.paisley.ac.uk/research/Asilverside/lichens/index.html and has been kept and extended as a teaching resource illustrating lichen diversity and as a resource for fellow lichenologists and other external users. Further pictures have been added as time and inclination have allowed.
However, in view of the now limited life expectancy of these previous hosting arrangements, the primary site is re-established and extended here at lastdragon.org. It remains a companion to my UWS BIODIVERSITY REFERENCE teaching resource. 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).
Please remember, 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.

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, mainly 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.
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 1024×768. I do not use pop-ups or javascript gimicks and have no interest in writing cookies to visitors' hard disks. Page coding is simple, in good, old-fashioned HTML 3, and should be readable by any browser - though rendition is marginally best in Internet Explorer (text layouts and visible alt tags to images).
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.

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. Currently I use my faithful companion of recent years, a Nikon D100 with 60mm and 105mm macro lenses, and the new Olympus SP-560UZ, which is 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).

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 at http://www-biol.paisley.ac.uk/research/Asilverside/Wickenfungi.html, though it currently requires a LOT of updating. In the fullness of time I shall add the current lichen list. [N.B. This Wicken site will have to be moved to here at lastdragon.org by September, 2009.]

The Banner Graphic
Identities, from left to right: Flavoparmelia caperata, Leptogium gelatinosum, Calicium viride, Cladonia bellidiflora, Lichenomphalia velutina, Xanthoria parietina.
Some of these await uploading to the site.

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)

A haphazard collection of image, identification and ecology links
References cited on individual species pages
Conditions of use
News and updates

lastdragon.org

Photographs of Scottish and other British lichens