The wood is full of them now: the hairy lichens hang from the branches of many of the trees, making them look like old greybearded men; the leafy lichens encircle the branches, their pale gray, green, and yellow patches looking as if they were made of crumpled paper cut into wavy plates; and the crusty lichens, scarcely distinguishable from the bark of the trees, cover every available space which the mosses have left free.
As I looked at these lichens and thought of their curious history I determined that we would study them to-day, and gathered a basketful of specimens (see Fig. 28). But when I had collected these I found I had not the heart to leave the mosses behind. I could not even break off a piece of bark with lichen upon it without some little moss coming too, especially the small thread-mosses (Bryum) which make a home for themselves in every nook and corner of the branches; while the feather-mosses, hair-mosses, cord-mosses, and many others made such a lovely carpet under my feet that each seemed too beautiful to pass by, and they found their way into my basket, crowned at the top with a large mass of the pale-green Sphagnum, or bog-moss, into which I sank more than ankle-deep as I crossed the bog in the centre of the wood on my way home.
Fig. 28.
Examples of Lichens. (From life.)
1, A hairy lichen. 2, A leafy lichen. 3, A crustaceous lichen.
f, f, the fruit.
So here they all are, and I hope by the help of our magic glass to let you into some of the secrets of their lives. It is true we must study the structure of lichens chiefly by diagrams, for it is too minute for beginners to follow under the microscope, so we must trust to drawings made by men more skilful in microscopic botany, at any rate for the present. But the mosses we can examine for ourselves and admire their delicate leaves and wonderful tiny spore-cases.
Now the first question which I hope you want to ask is, how it is that these lowly plants flourish so well in the depth of winter when their larger and stronger companions die down to the ground. We will answer this first as to the lichens, which are such strange uncanny-looking plants that it is almost difficult to imagine they are alive at all; and indeed they have been a great puzzle to botanists.
Fig. 29.
