To see a world in a grain of sand...

 As William Blake said, there is a wonderful world to be seen if you look closely at small things. I think this is part of my fascination with lichens - there is always something new to be seen if you look closely, preferably with a hand lens or microscope. And if you have a UV torch, the world becomes even more colourful.

Last month, I had lunch at a restaurant on the Beauly Firth, The Storehouse (I can recommend it!). It was a beautiful sunny calm day.

Beauly Firth shoreline

As always, I had a look for fallen twigs, just in case there were interesting lichens...

It all became much more spectacular under UV light.

The yellow lichen (Xanthoria parietina) fluoresces bright orange under UV.  Different chemicals in the lichen cause the fluorescence.  In this case the chemical is called "parietin" and acts as a sunscreen.  I don't know which came first, the name of the chemical or the name of the lichen. I have no idea what is causing the deep red fluorescence between the 2 orange patches, as there is nothing visible on the bark. The small patch of pale orange to the bottom right is a lichen called Lecidella eleochroma.

The array of grey lichens along the bottom of the branch are more difficult to name but I decided  it was about time I tackled these grey "jam tart" lichens which I have avoided so far.  I picked up another fallen branch by Loch Imrich. Here it is:

I decided to look at the patch of lichens just above 18 on the ruler.

The "jam tarts" I mentioned are the round structures with white margins - just like jam tarts with a jammy middle and a white pastry case. I could see 2 different lichens; on the left, brown jam tarts (apothecia) on a white background  and on the right, frosted jam tarts which looked as if they had icing sugar on them (it's called pruina botanically) with a yellow background. When I looked a bit further along there was a third tiny green lichen, only a few mm across.

 In my quest to find a name for these lichens, I measured them, noted the different colours and tested them by putting tiny drops of chemicals on then looking for any colour changes.  Then armed with a book by Dobson, tried to key them out - with no success! So no names at present. Looking at them  with the UV torch was interesting.

The bright yellow and turquoise patches are where I applied a small amount of chemical, usually abbreviated to K (though it is actually KOH, Potasssium hydroxide).  As none of the lichens looked orange under UV, this ruled out some IDs and I still can't name the lichens. I think I will need some help! But I enjoyed the investigation.