More on "what is a thing, what is a different thing, how many things?" Like, this is of interest to me, so...

Let us consider the following image, which I took and which belongs to me so I can freely discuss it here. It's a cellphone shot of a rock under fairly substantial macro-ization. The rock, which is a sandstone-y rock next to the creek behind my house, has several blotchy things on it. I know, by way of being only partially uninformed, that the blotchy things on the rock are called lichens. Probably. Probably there is some kind of lichenosity going on there on the rock. Let us regard the rock:

Having recognized that there is lichenosity going on with respect to this rock, next I need to determine how many different kinds of lichenosity are going on here. How many. Well, heck, I don't know much about lichens.

I can see that there are "ones with black dots on them", that's one kind. They're pretty easy to spot and actually what had me in the yard taking pictures of rocks in the rain in the first place. The black dots look like they're arranged in a vaguely concentric pattern, too. That might be a thing. Noted. Lichen Sort #1: Grey-green ones with black dots on them in a vaguely concentric pattern.

There is a green one with lumpy darker-green bits, only one really good example, and it's visible on the left hand side of the image. This looks to me like a different sort than Lichen Sort #1. So, Imma call it Lichen Sort #2.

There are a number of little pale patches of nearly-white that don't have a border around them. Lichen Sort #3.

And then there are bigger, grey-green patches with dark borders around them and no interesting features. Lichen Sort #4, I guess. They could just be grown-up nearly-white ones. I have no earthly idea, here.

So, here's a picture of how I adjudge the lichenosity of this rock. This is just a theory, next I'll need to go look at some lichen information and figure out how to tell them apart and stuff. I don't really know that there are four kinds here. I suspect that there are four kinds here. Being able to tell stuff apart is like 50% of the field naturalists job, if not more. It's not always easy and I am no pro. This is my first draft about lichenosity, here. I am learning to see.

Publicado el marzo 1, 2018 04:51 TARDE por whichchick