Compound microscope (left) Stereoscopic microscope (right)
‘It’s alive!!’ – That’s the exclamation I mouth to myself back in the lab at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Never again will I look at lichen in the same way!
Under the eye of a microscope the true world of lichens really comes into vivid life… with a rough coloured bit of bark suddenly becoming a luminous 3D coral-like forest where insects may take shelter, hide or feed.
Lichen Blossom
With focussed eye-squinting attention I learn how to use both Stereoscopic (often known as a dissecting microscope) and Compound (two converging lens systems for viewing slides) microscopes for finding out more about the beautiful array of lichen samples I have bought back from my recent visit to Dawyck Botanic Garden. (Where bushy lichens grow so thick it looks like early spring blossom).
After being shown the art of bringing my slightly crispy dried lichens back to fluffy sweetly pungent life – they have a faint aroma of the forest when gently sprayed with a ‘common or garden’ indoor plant water sprayer – I have a go at making my first ‘slide’ of a slice of a lichen.
A lichen slice. Unfortunately not my image but I’m getting training on microscope imaging this week! Source: Song miae @ www.photomacrography.net
Now specimens have to be sufficiently thin and transparent to be viewed under the microscope. But with an un-practised shakey hand my slide turns out to be more of ‘squash’ than a slice – However to my joy I discover that a ‘squash’ specimen is actually a thing – a technical term for creating a slide of a very soft specimen. Result. Although I endeavour to practise creating un-squashed slides too!
A squash specimen Source: www.telgraphic.com
Amazingly before my eyes the internal workings of the lichen, both its fungal and algal parties are revealled. And when you crank up the magnification and your entire vision is emmersed in the detail of spore and cell, the world takes on a new slightly blurry meaning. Blurry because when I look away from the microscope eye piece my eyes seem somewhat resistant to re-adjust to the view of the human world prior to oogling the wonderous world of lichen close up and personal.
I still have much to learn both in lichen identification (a life-times work surely) – once you learn something you realise how much more there is to learn– (as David Susuki in the book The Sacred Balance said of our discovery of new species).. And I still have much to learn about how to engage people with lichens to facilitate understanding of the connection between local & global biodiversity, environmental and human health.
But of one thing is I’m sure. I am on a mission to get as many people in Edinburgh as possible to have a go at looking at the extraordinary, amazing, hidden world of lichens viewed through a handlens!!
Caley Spring Show
“It’s another world”, marvelled a member of the public my most recent public engagement event held as part of the Royal Caledonian Spring Show. I can’t wait to get out there and enthuse more people about the incredible world’s within the World that we are a part of!
To find out more about the lichen research I am doing in Edinburgh on lichens as air quality indicators follow my open science blog here at Botanic Stories.