British Lichens
|
 |
The Lichens of Britain and Ireland:- New edition now available. The standard scientific text for the lichens of Britain and Ireland (1046 pages). £65 plus £7 p&p (£45 plus £7 p&p for BLS members). Order form available here. |
 |
Lichens: An Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species by Frank Dobson. 5th edition (2005). The essential and widely used field guide and reference book. Available from: The Richmond Publishing Co. Ltd. P.O. Box 963, Slough, SL2 3RS Also available from internet booksellers such as Summerfield Books or the Natural History Book Store |
 |
The British Lichen Society website. Full of information on people to contact, identification, publications etc. There is an invaluable checklist of the British and Irish species and a list of synonyms. |
|
The current English list of 1395 species compiled by Natural England with filters for extinctions, endemics, species' status and designations. To download Right-click image and select save target as. The data was produced as part of the Lost Life publication available from the State of the natural environment page in Natural England's website. The list will be updated as new records are reported. This version is dated 8 August 2010. |
Irish Lichens. A very nicely designed website by Jenny Seawright, with species and habitat descriptions and lots more.
UKlichens (Yahoo Group) - A new informal group set up to discuss lichenology in the whole of Britain and Ireland.
Scottish Lichenology (Yahoo Group) - An informal group set up to discuss Scottish lichenology.
University of Oslo lichen herbarium. A professionally crafted site. Lots of specialist lichen pages and an excellent photogallery.
Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh. Research, projects and the role of RGBE. Includes information on climate change.
Lichens of North America. An excellent site relating to the book with the same title. If you like lichens and have £50 to spare (is that all!), do yourself a big favour and buy this book - it is one of the best natural history books on the planet. The photos are superb. And the common names are wonderful - each one a poem. When you escape (like Odesius from the Sirens?) from the wonderful pictures you will notice another important thing; many of the species are also found in the UK so can help us with our ID (many more you wish you could find here because they look so fab).
Lief and Anita Stridvall's Website. A 'Magnum Opus' containing many thousands of excellent photos of plants, fungi (their main interest) and over 600 lichen species mainly from Sweden but also throughout Europe.
The Natural History Museum website has a lichen section and a really useful guide to lichens on twigs, plus loads of other interesting information.
Interested in taking a course about lichens? The Field Studies Council run several courses on lichens which come highly recommended as a quick way in to this fascinating group. If the direct link to the lichen page doesn't work try this one for the FSC home page
The UK Biodiversity Action Plan for lichens. Includes information on; current status, factors causing loss or decline, current action, action plans, policy and legislation and more.
The Lichen Ireland project. This project is initially a four-year study (to 2010) to determine the status and distribution of lichen species throughout Ireland.
Paul Whelan’s Lichens of Ireland. Photos and descriptions of Ireland's lichens with text on biology and ecology.
Lichen Grey Literature for Scotland: This is an up to date list of commissioned reports that you wouldn't be able to find in a published paper search. Includes a map showing survey locations. FAB.
Click the picture to open the link.
Opticron LED illuminated hand lenses - useful for searching dark crevices on cloudy days. 10x and 15x available.
Lens diameter is 26mm. Lens quality is excellent. Has one LED providing good illumination. Comes with a plastic belt pouch. Takes 3 AAA batteries (not included).
But no place to attach a neck string. The X15 version is really useful BUT (design fault) it has a transparent plastic collar which also secures the lenses in place (so you can't remove it).
Presumably it was designed to inspect cloth or some other flat surface but this makes it less useful for lichens because you can't focus on something in a crevice such as a lichen in a bark crack.
I took a saw and cut the collar off my X15 lens - which was a bit tricky. The X10 doesn't have a collar. I think the x10 is a better general lens but the x15 is useful for extra small features.
A beautifully crafted LED illuminated hand lens (image links to a PDF).
10x with two LEDs for excellent shadow-free viewing (batteries included) and a neck string.
Superior to the Opticron in illumination and design but much more expensive.
Acid free A4 paper for permanent storage of your specimens.
Available in packets of 25, 100 or 500 sheets (only £20) from this Family History website.
Permanent, acid free pens also available.
Scientific equipment such as dropper bottles and chemicals from Scientific & Chemical.
Getting hold of chemicals is not as straight-forward as it used to be.
