The frog spawn arrives - and an interesting twig

Frog spawn has appeared today in my pond – quite hard to see in the photo because of the reflections of trees and sky, but  you can make out the tops of two clumps with plenty more under the surface.

Frog spawn in my pond

I walked round Loch Imrich today as well, and a small amount has appeared there too.

Frog spawn in Loch Imrich

While walking round the loch I picked up one of the many fallen twigs on the ground as it looked to have a good selection of lichens on it.  It was a section of a larch branch  about 25cm (10 inches) long and 15mm (1/2 inch) diameter and I counted 8 different lichens on it, all of which are fairly common locally. There was one species it did not have so I picked up the much thinner twig, at the top of the photo which has an example of it.

How do we know it is a larch twig? Well, apart from the fact that it was underneath some of the larch trees that surround the loch, it has the characteristic nobbles along it.  The roughness of the larch twigs encourages a good growth of lichens, presumably because the spores or fragments of lichen are easily caught and trapped in the bark.  Larch has an acid bark (like pines and birches) and lichens can be quite fussy about where they grow – some prefer acid bark and some prefer less acid bark like that on oaks and hawthorn. I have put some numbers on the photo and I’ll give a list of the different names of the lichens.

1.   1 An Usnea (Beard lichen) probably Usnea subfloridana which is the most common locally.

2.    2   Hypogymnia physodes which has inflated lobe tips so it feels quite bouncy when you press it.

3.    3 Platismatia glauca – quite big grey-blue “leaves” which stick up and are brown underneath.

4.     4 A bit more of 1 (Usnea) and 2(H.physodes)

5.     5 Tuckermanopsis chlorophylla – again more leaflike but smaller than 3 and a browny green colour.

6.      6 A Parmelia  - probably P. sulcata but a bit too young to be sure.

7.      7 Bryoria fuscescens – a horsehair lichen

8.       8Evernia prunastri – this one has been used for a perfume fixative.

9.      9 On the thin twig is a look alike for Evernia prunastri but is a darker colour and covered in tiny fingerlike projections(isidia) and is Pseudevernia furfuracea.