Posts Tagged ‘Usnea subfloridana’
lichens on the snow
As you may know, we are still under a blanket of snow here in New Brunswick. And later today a Nor’easter is predicted to bring another 30 cm. Not the best place for collecting plants as dyestuff. But, as I always find – nature provides!
Our windy weather this past week has dropped lots of Old Man’s Beard lichen (Usnea subfloridana) along our driveway. These lichens grow in the maple and spruce trees on our property but usually they grow too high to reach. I was able to collect quite a handful.
And now my experiment begins.
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Lichens have been used for centuries as a source of dye. The Roccella species, for example, makes a purple dye called orchil. I may not get purple from my Usnea lichens, but I am ‘dyeing’ to try!
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The typical extraction process for lichens is called ‘ammonia fermentation’ – soaking the lichens in ammonia for two or three weeks. Lichens also yield dye with boiling. I have decided to try the ammonia method first, although I will not use urine as was traditionally done!
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So I stuffed the Usnea lichens into a canning jar, added water and a tablespoon of ammonia, labelled the jar and put it on the shelf.
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And now we wait. I’ll let you know what, if any, colour develops. I feel like a housewife of old, wanting some dyestuff to add colour to my life, willing to make do with what is available.
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Copyright 2014 Jane Tims
‘niche’ above the ground
Around us are spaces so familiar, we don’t pay attention to them anymore. I remember this when I walk in the woods near our house. On the ground, at my feet, are layers of leaves from last autumn, the carpet of mosses, the plants of the understory.
And then I remember to look up and see the space above me.
This space is the realm of the trees. It is a space shaped by their canopies, the needles of the Balsam Fir and White Pine, the leaves of Red Maple, and the dead branches and twigs of the spruce. Most of the trees reach upward, roughly perpendicular to the ground. They stand together, parallel, the masts and rigging of a sailing ship. Others have succumbed to decay and gravity and wind, and have fallen. Their trunks make diagonal slashes through the spaces above and leave gaps in the canopy.
snowshoe trail and sap bucket on maple
These are spaces I cannot access, since my tree-climbing days are over. But I can move there, briefly, in winter. When the snow builds on the ground, it lifts me into the trees. I am reminded of this when I see the empty tap holes in the trunks of the maples along the trail. These are the holes left behind when we pull the taps at the end of maple syrup production in the spring. When we collected the sap, the taps were about three feet above the surface of the snow, so we could access them easily. Now, snow gone, the tap holes are above my head. Our snowshoe paths were elevated into the space above the ground. One winter the snows were so high, we had to trim the branches along the trail. Next summer we could look up and see our winter path, traced by the absence of branches in the space above our heads.
Usnea subfloridana Stirt. is a lichen often found growing on old and stressed trees in coniferous woods. The common name, Old Man's Beard, refers to the matted, stringy appearance of the lichen, hanging in clumps from tree branches. Lichens are made up of two species, an algae and a fungus, living together symbiotically.
Old Man’s Beard
Usnea subfloridana Stirt.
you and I
years ago
forced our ways
bent through the thicket
of lichen and spruce
Usnea
caught in your beard
and we laughed
absurd!
us with stooped backs
and grey hair?
found a game trail
a strawberry marsh
wild berries
crushed into sedge
stained shirts
lips
and fingers
strawberries
dusted with sugar
washed down with cold tea
warmed by rum
today
an old woman
alone
lost her way in the spruce
found beard
caught in the branches
and cried
Published as: ‘Old Man’s Beard’, Summer 1994, the Fiddlehead 180
© Jane Tims
