I'm a Zoologist by training and am currently involved in managing ecology projects. Back when I was at school I had an interest in lichen and it's never really gone away. I took some nice pictures of these interesting symbionts whilst I was on St Helena earlier in the year (there's one in an earlier post on this blog about 1541 banners) but here are some that I found in Scotland and Northumbria over the summer (the latter place being in the north of England as opposed to north-Umbria (i.e. Italy), which sounds (and in fact is) much more exotic).
The picture above is from a hill (actually an extinct volcano - and it looks like one too) called North Berwick Law in East Lothian (to the east of Edinburgh). The orange lichen is probably Xanthoria sp. or similar. Not sure about the various grey ones.
This one was on a stone at Housesteads Roman fort on Hadrian's Wall. You can see how the various lichens are pushing up against each other like a map of central Europe a river catchments or something. They do make nice abstract patterns I think and I will be using these and others in future graphical projects, even if it's just for making new labels for my home-brew.
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