{"id":6903,"date":"2019-03-26T20:59:05","date_gmt":"2019-03-27T03:59:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/cnpsslo.org\/?p=6903"},"modified":"2019-05-28T21:13:14","modified_gmt":"2019-05-29T04:13:14","slug":"lichens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/cnpsslo.org\/2019\/03\/lichens\/","title":{"rendered":"Lichens"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>A few years ago, I\u00a0became interested in lichens and bryophytes during the\u00a0winter months when there were few flowers to look for. I took a class on\u00a0lichen ID up at U.C. Berkeley&#8217;s Jepson herbarium, and then another at the\u00a0Santa Barbara botanic garden. I highly recommend these classes for\u00a0anyone wanting to\u00a0learn more about lichens. Most lichens have algae as a\u00a0photosynthesizing component, others use a cyanobacteria in addition to its\u00a0fungal component. CNPS has helped protect rare lichens as ranked plants,\u00a0so I\u2019m including them this month in Ethnobotany Notes.<\/p>\n<p>People around the world use lichens for food, medicine, dying wool, and a\u00a0variety of other uses. I have read that Native American people in the\u00a0Pacific Northwest had traditionally eaten a type of <em>Bryoria<\/em> lichen, which\u00a0was boiled or pit roasted in a special way to reduce the toxicity from the\u00a0secondary compounds. I\u2019ve also heard of friends who made an antibiotic\u00a0salve from our local <em>Usnea<\/em>. Usnic acid has long been a part of commercial herbal deodorants and skin creams. There are reports that it was used for baby diapers as well. It is estimated that 50% of all\u00a0lichen species have antibiotic properties.<\/p>\n<p>Some lichens were used for poison, especially those high in vulpinic acid which tends to make a very yellow lichen. Lichens\u00a0were also used in ancient Egypt as part of the embalming process.\u00a0Lichens are a common source of natural dyes. Indigenous people in North America made a yellow dye from the Wolf Lichen, <em>Letharia vulpina<\/em> of the Sierras by boiling it in water. Some dyes can be extracted with boiling water, but others require\u00a0ammonia fermentation, which is steeping the lichen in ammonia (traditionally urine) for at least two to three weeks. In the\u00a0Scottish highlands, various lichens yielded red, orange, brown, and yellow dyes. In Europe, a purple was extracted from\u00a0<em>Roccella<\/em> and <em>Ochrolechia<\/em>. Litmus, the pH indicator is extracted from the <em>Roccella<\/em> lichen.<\/p>\n<p>Ethnolichenology has quite a Wikipedia page. I was surprised. It is well worth looking up, if only for the 19th century\u00a0Japanese painting of <em>Umbilicaria<\/em> lichen gathering. If this has whetted your appetite for lichens, you can find lichen walks and\u00a0workshop information at the <a href=\"https:\/\/californialichens.org\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">California Lichen Society<\/a> (CALS) website: californialichens.org. Sylvia Sharnoff has also written\u00a0about lichens and people.<\/p>\n<p>by Cathy Chambers<\/p>\n<p>Photo:\u00a0Red<em> Usnea rubicunda<\/em> at Los Osos Oaks Reserve; photo David Chipping<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>People around the world use lichens for food, medicine, dying wool, and a\u00a0variety of other uses.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7807,"featured_media":6904,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_et_pb_use_builder":"","_et_pb_old_content":"","_et_gb_content_width":"","_price":"","_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_header":"","_tribe_default_ticket_provider":"","_tribe_ticket_capacity":"0","_ticket_start_date":"","_ticket_end_date":"","_tribe_ticket_show_description":"","_tribe_ticket_show_not_going":false,"_tribe_ticket_use_global_stock":"","_tribe_ticket_global_stock_level":"","_global_stock_mode":"","_global_stock_cap":"","_tribe_rsvp_for_event":"","_tribe_ticket_going_count":"","_tribe_ticket_not_going_count":"","_tribe_tickets_list":"[]","_tribe_ticket_has_attendee_info_fields":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[394,406],"tags":[],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v22.0 - 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