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| Winter Colour |
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Page 1 of 3 By Jean Lawman There is a stark beauty in winter bare trees; trunks and boughs are elegant and sinuous, or lofty and straight. They are darkly and sharply outlined against the pale rose, lemon and pallid blue-green of the landscape; twigs are stout and gently curving, or finely interlaced. The geometric patterns reflect nature’s fine balancing act. Bright colours are temporary, an effect of light or weather, or else they are found in the detail, as points of light among sombre tones, as below the trees where the once living, once green leaves lie scattered, sunlit and glinting, copper and silver. Cornwall’s soft and muggy climate encourages growth - out of season wild flowers, early daffodil cultivars, things we all notice enthusiastically as they move us forward to the spring. Swathes of bracken, rain-soaked and dead, glow russet, even red in the lowering sun, and lichens, lovers of the mild Cornish climate and pure ocean air, can acquire a vague luminosity under a blanket of grey cloud.  Pictures by Jean Lawman. One of the brightly coloured, common lichen, found on the coast, goes by the very dull name of Common Orange Lichen, but at least its Latin name - Xanthoria parietina - has a little charisma attached to it. Neat, finely textured splashes of ochre yellow highlight many a mineral-rich surface - lending colour to the greys and blues of roofs, rocks and walls. Not all lichens of this colour are the above mentioned Xanthoria, there are others, like Caloplachas, that are similar. All are worthy of close study, but the detail of the Xanthoria is particularly beautiful, and revealing too. The body of the lichen grows outwards. It is usually irregularly shaped, but often roughly circular, and, on old specimens (most grow very slowly indeed), the central area may be completely dead, leaving the substrate visible. The outer parts are leaf-like and butter yellow, with crimped and upturned edges, but, in the middle of the living part, are some tiny cup-like structures, with silver grey rims and deep orange wells; these are ‘asci’ or fruiting bodies.  Soft Shield Fern. Most people will be aware that lichens comprise two different organisms, growing together in a mutually beneficial relationship, and that is what adds to the wonder of them, this harmony, this triumph of evolution - the marrying together of a fungus with an algae, representing two very different plant groups. In this case, the fungal partner provides the actual physical support – the body, and the scattered cells of the algae, containing chlorophyll, like all green plants, manufactures the food. |
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