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An incredible story of returning one of England’s rarest lichens to its historic home – more than 350 miles away.
Let’s learn how expert Dave Lamacraft translocated the lichen across the country.
The Scrambled Egg Lichen, a rare and endangered lichen, has been reintroduced to its historic home in East Anglia.
This yellow lichen with a white fungus on top really does look like an egg. But before you start imagining carrying it in a frying pan, let’s follow the amazing journey of transporting this lichen 350 miles.
The Breckland, in the east of England, has suffered more than other places with habitat loss. One of the casualties is the Scrambled Egg Lichen. It became extinct in the Breckland due to habitat loss resulting from changes in farming practices, an increase in tree cover and a loss of rabbits. The Scrambled Egg Lichen is 1 of 3 specialist lichens lost from the region, where they were once common, along with the Starry Breck and Scaly Breck Lichen.
Fortunately, we have found a way to reintroduce it back into the Breckland. Our Lichen and Bryophyte Senior Specialist Dave Lamacraft collected small patches of the lichen from Penhale in Cornwall and transported it using a process called translocation.
The rare Scrambled Egg Lichen Fulgensia fulgens is not just striking, but also a crucial part of the biological soil crust community which stabilises soils and facilitates the growth of other plants. It also hosts a globally rare fungus Lichenochora epifulgens which is even rarer than the Scrambled Egg lichen itself.
The UK is home to globally significant populations of rare lichen species, some of which are found nowhere else on earth. However, lichens face increasing threats from habitat loss, climate change and air pollution. Projects such as this are vital and will help us to reverse these declines.
Translocation is a process used in conservation which involves moving an organism to a new location, where it will hopefully survive and thrive. To translocate the Scrambled Egg Lichen, small patches of the lichen were carefully removed and reattached using a combination of water and bookbinding glue.
Some 200 small pieces of the lichen – about the size of a 20p piece – were removed from Cornwall and 160 transplanted into the Breckland chalky landscape. The site in Cornwall is managed by Cornwall Wildlife Trust.
About 160 lichens were translocated to a small area of about 100m at a site managed by Norfolk Wildlife Trust.
Measuring long term success of this translocation will take a few years, but it is hoped that if successful, the lichen will show evidence of growing after one year and spread naturally afterwards.
None of this work would have been possible without the support from Cornwall Wildlife Trust and Norfolk Wildlife Trust, with funding from Natural England as part of the Species Recovery Programme.
200 small patches of Scrambled Egg Lichen were transported from Cornwall to Norfolk
The Scrambled Egg Lichen was transported to the east of England in seed trays
The lichen was transplanted across an area of about 100m at a site managed by Norfolk Wildlife Trust
Glue and water was used to transplant the lichen
The sun is shining, the days are longer and our green fingers are ready to get stuck back in to some spring gardening.
Did you know that dreaming of Harebells is said to be a sign of true love, or that Daffodils are used to celebrate a couple's first decade of marriage?
Rob Hodgson started learning about lichens in lockdown, as a complete beginner.
Exploring his hometown of Bristol, he learnt to love these amazing green plants, even bringing them into his work as an illustrator.
“Lichens are cool because they are everywhere. Once you notice them, you realise they are crazy, weird, colourful and interesting.”
Rob Hodgson started his lichen journey in lockdown as a complete beginner. Walking around Bristol one day, a lichen peaked his interest and from then on he was gripped by these secret miniature forests.
As an illustrator, Rob has created dynamic and lifelike lichen characters to help more people starting out.
We went to chat to Rob and join him on a lichen hunt.
“It was kind of my lockdown project and I just got interested one day, like what is this crazy thing. When I first started looking at lichens, you go online and there’s a million Latin names and I was just like, no this isn’t for me – I’m not a lichen expert. But once you learn the common names and you start to spot different ones, it gets easier. You don’t have to go anywhere far away, you can see these things just on the street. There’s one called chewing Chewing Gum lichen that you can see everywhere once you tune into it, just on the pavement.
“You do definitely notice if you go to the countryside, it’s like a lichen explosion. But I live in the centre of Bristol pretty much and there’s still lichens everywhere. On my doorstep, you see them on the pavements, you see them on walls and in my local parks there’s loads of lichens.
It’s a really good time of year to go lichen hunting [autumn/winter] and you don’t need any stuff. You can just go and as soon as you get out of the house you are on a lichen hunt – that’s as easy as it is. You just need to look on the floor, look in the tress and you’re good to go.
“The way I work things out sometimes is through my work. When I was looking at lichens, I thought how can I make this more interesting than all of these super technical, botanical drawings. I drew one, and then once you notice one, you notice another, and then all of sudden I had drawn 20 different lichens.
There was a lot of back and forth between going out and looking at lichens and going back and modifying them.
That was where I was coming from, trying to make them fun and accessible.”
Rob has made beautifully designed lichen characters including dust lichen, shield lichen and oak moss. Follow him on social media here.
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