British Lichens  
Home About this site What are lichens Links Species list Picture index Habitat tours Opal

Links


Books

The lichens of Great Britain and Ireland
The Lichens of Britain and Ireland:- .

The second edition is out of print but PDFs that make up the third edition are available from The British Lichen Society.
Lichens: An Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species Lichens: An Illustrated Guide to the British and Irish Species by Frank Dobson.

The essential and widely used field guide and reference book.

Available from: The British Lichen Society. Also available from internet booksellers such as Summerfield Books or the Natural History Book Store

Websites/links

BLS website 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.
BLS facebook The British Lichen Society facebook page With discussion topics, events, pictures etc.
If not already on Facebook you will have to join and then log in to see the page.
If you are already on Facebook you could just log in and search for British Lichen Society.
English lichen list
The current English list of 1418 species with filters for extinctions, endemics, species' status and designations.
To download Right-click image and select save target as.
The list will be updated as new records are reported. This version is dated 29 November 2011.
NBNGateway The NBN Gateway holds over a million lichens records.
It is an excellent resource to refer to when querying distributions
and identifying what to look out for on a field trip.

Mycology-Lichenology of Iran
IranianText

A comprehensive website for the development of Mycology and Lichenology in Iran edited by Sohrabi, M. & Ghobad-Nejhad, M.

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. 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.

Darwin Fish   Dawkins Fish   Flying Spaghetti Monster   Reality Bites






Car stickers, window stickers, fridge magnets and lapel badges.
For people who appreciate the magic of scientific reality (evolution, life, the universe and everything else)
based on real evidence which has been tested and found to be true.

Artwork

Liz Brooke Ward artwork   Liz Brooke Ward artwork

  Liz Brooke Ward:- Fab textile artwork inspired by lichens.
Helen Bamber artwork   Helen Bamber artwork

  Helen Bamber Textiles:- Highly accomplished artwork inspired by lichens.
Elin_T_website1   Elin_T_website1   Elin_T_website2

  Elin Thomas artwork:- Highly skilled purses, brooches (and commissions)
    inspired by lichens, mold and coral.

Equipment

Click the picture to open the link.

Hand lenses

illuminated handlens 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.

illuminated handlens 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.

Paper

Archive quality paper 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.

Chemicals and dropper bottles

dropper bottles 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.

Other books

Richard Dawkins

The god delusion: Game, set and match to reality.

The greatest show on Earth – the evidence for evolution: A beautifully crafted and intelligent rebuttal of the nonsense of creationism and intelligent design.

Charles Darwin: On the origin of species by means of natural selection: Set us on the road to reality.

The Cambridge Encyclopaedia of Astronomy (1977): Excellent book about the Universe and how it works.


Music

Neil Young: Natural Beauty. A brilliant and highly evocative song that protests against the destruction of the world’s natural heritage:
A natural beauty should be preserved like a monument to nature.

Johann Pachelbel 1653 - 1706: Kanon in D.

Bedrich Smetana 1824 – 1884. Vltava from the album Ma Vlast: Superb musical rendition of landscape:
A swirling river with rapids and waterfalls, woodland glades etc.

Labi Siffre: So Strong. Powerfully defiant song that strikes out against inequality and injustice.

The Bhundu boys: Jakessa. Jit live. Great music including fab steel string guitar.

Carlos Santana – the master. Albums: Moonflower, Borboletta, Abraxas, Supernatural etc.