Lichen questions (1 Viewer)

? about paint removal from, and cultivation of, Lichen.

I became interested in lichen care as a result of being apprised of ancient monoliths becoming canvas' for spray paint artists.

I see there are a lot of fungi experts on this forum and also lovers of beauty so perhaps this issue may interest y'all as well.

First off, does anyone think that the lichen that is under spray paint is actually alive? Is there any reasonable way to tell?

Second, our experiments have shown that oil (horticultural) helps to remove paint from rock and moss (appliance acrylic with primer and enamel in it). Also we have tested horticultural oil on four kinds of lichen and the little fellows came through with flying colors.

Lime would help to remove other kinds of paint and we would like to test it. Does anyone have a recipe to share as a starting point or any other experience in this area? We would like to find the most effective tools possible, so any tips on new solvents to use would also be appreciated.

Salt helped and we've heard that 3% solutions should not be a problem.

Dish soap helped remove the oil but didn't seem to affect the paint. We used the oil on plants and moss but not yet the lichen.

perhaps H2O2? any estimations as to what will kill microbial growth and what % would be safe? 3% is safe for plant roots..

The other main goal for me at this time re lichen is their cultivation and culture to repopulate areas that have been disturbed and keep existing growths healthy. Possibly even grow them for fun. Wouldn't it be quite a mural to be able to place the growths as you wanted them?

Any cultivation tips or critiquing of my plan would be very welcome.

The Plan
I plan on securing various lichen and blending them to a puree with blue-green algae and then applying them to rock surfaces.

I believe it may also be a good idea to simply apply a foliar spray of algae/cyanobacteria to existing lichen colonies. I am concerned as to whether such foliars would be effective and whether their effectivness would be impacted by the timing of the spray (do lichens have a regular spore or breeding season? like springtime?)

Does the source of the algae matter so very much? For instance, does anyone know if viable chloroplasts can be found in the blue-green algae supplements sold for human consumption? is actual live 'pond scum' needed? How about a water bucket of algae placed near lichen colonies? Is that the arrangement that is needed? any good links for particular cyanobacteria or such?

I also wonder if it would be beneficial to 'tent" the intended growing surface so that the joining symbionts would be subject to less interference/greater chance of finding each other.

Do lichen benefit from CO2 or oxygen infusions? do they gain from other fertilizers?

thanks a lot for any help and definately for your kind attentions~!

Cakes said:

I became interested in lichen care as a result of being apprised of ancient monoliths becoming canvas' for spray paint artists.

I see there are a lot of fungi experts on this forum and also lovers of beauty so perhaps this issue may interest y'all as well.

First off, does anyone think that the lichen that is under spray paint is actually alive? Is there any reasonable way to tell?

Second, our experiments have shown that oil (horticultural) helps to remove paint from rock and moss (appliance acrylic with primer and enamel in it). Also we have tested horticultural oil on four kinds of lichen and the little fellows came through with flying colors.

Lime would help to remove other kinds of paint and we would like to test it. Does anyone have a recipe to share as a starting point or any other experience in this area? We would like to find the most effective tools possible, so any tips on new solvents to use would also be appreciated.

Salt helped and we've heard that 3% solutions should not be a problem.

Dish soap helped remove the oil but didn't seem to affect the paint. We used the oil on plants and moss but not yet the lichen.

perhaps H2O2? any estimations as to what will kill microbial growth and what % would be safe? 3% is safe for plant roots..

The other main goal for me at this time re lichen is their cultivation and culture to repopulate areas that have been disturbed and keep existing growths healthy. Possibly even grow them for fun. Wouldn't it be quite a mural to be able to place the growths as you wanted them?

Any cultivation tips or critiquing of my plan would be very welcome.

The Plan
I plan on securing various lichen and blending them to a puree with blue-green algae and then applying them to rock surfaces.

I believe it may also be a good idea to simply apply a foliar spray of algae/cyanobacteria to existing lichen colonies. I am concerned as to whether such foliars would be effective and whether their effectivness would be impacted by the timing of the spray (do lichens have a regular spore or breeding season? like springtime?)

Does the source of the algae matter so very much? For instance, does anyone know if viable chloroplasts can be found in the blue-green algae supplements sold for human consumption? is actual live 'pond scum' needed? How about a water bucket of algae placed near lichen colonies? Is that the arrangement that is needed? any good links for particular cyanobacteria or such?

I also wonder if it would be beneficial to 'tent" the intended growing surface so that the joining symbionts would be subject to less interference/greater chance of finding each other.

Do lichen benefit from CO2 or oxygen infusions? do they gain from other fertilizers?

thanks a lot for any help and definately for your kind attentions~!

Click to expand...

I've heard that painting rocks with yogurt helps encourage lichen. Natural is best.

Hi Cakes,

I feel that you are making a few assumptions here, though you are also asking questions that I certainly cannot answer myself, and which I am not sure even have known answers.

But the guiding thing to remember with lichens is that they do everything slowly. The grow slowly. They die slowly. The fact that a lichen looks the same days or weeks after treatment does not mean it has survived.

One of the classic investigations of lichens' sensitivity to pollutants was carried out back in the 1960s by Erik Skye in Sweden. He placed a leaking sulphur dioxide cylinder near a tree trunk. Grass around the cylinder went yellow and died back within days, but the lichens looked just a little corroded. It was only in the following winter, half a year later, that it became clear that the lichens HAD all died. Nor indeed was there any recolonisation of the tree trunk even a couple of years later.

Lichens are sensitive to a variety of cleaning agents and great damage to lichen communities can result from their use. As I have said, the damage may not be immediately apparent. One of my various "hats" is that of lichen recorder for one of our nature reserves. It contains one of the few remaining fenland windpumps (looks like a windmill but is smaller and was never used to mill grain). Admittedly it was moved from its original site but it is still an important relic. I was delighted one day to find that the concrete base of the windpump had developed a rich community of small saxicolous lichens, especially various Caloplaca species. Most would have been new to the reserve list, except that I was not officially recording lichens at the time, had other responsibilities that day, and Caloplaca species need full-time attention!

So, last spring, I went back to the windpump, ready to start work on this community, to find that there was no trace of any lichens on the structure. Not one! In the intervening period, the wooden parts of the windpump had been treated with preservative, a very necessary task, but the concrete base had not been touched (or not officially). Most likely some of the preservative ran down onto the base and the contractors attempted some cleaning, probably just spreading the preservative around further. Or maybe it was just the fumes.

So be very careful with any chemicals and organic solvents. I'd be surprised if H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) could be used, even though certain, specialised wood-decay fungi actually secrete it to aid in wood breakdown.

As for cultivation and effectively "constructing" lichens - most lichen fungi have very precise relationships with their algae. There are exceptions, but the majority of lichens appear to require a single genus or often a single species of alga. Only a fairly small proportion of lichens have cyanobacteria (usually Nostoc) as their phycobionts, and that proportion is probably smaller in lowland California than it is here in Britain. The taxonomy of lichen phycobionts is very poorly known - hardly surprising when the taxonomy of free-living species of such important genera as Trebouxia and Trentepohlia has been clarified only in recent years. It is not clear to what extent lichen algae are the same species as those that are free-living, and even if they are, they seem likely to be genetically adapted, physiologically and biochemically, to their lichen role.

So supplying algae is very unlikley to work. In nature, lichen fungi seem to acquire their algal symbionts in one of three ways:
1) they spread by asexual reproductive units (e.g. isidia or soredia) in which algal cells are carried along with a tuft of the fungus;
2) they germinate from spores and acquire free-living algae that may well have escaped from other lichens;
3) (and this is common), they germinate from spores and then steal algae from established lichens.

I think that use of typical fertilisers would benefit only a limited number of nitrophilous species, especially Xanthoria species which would provide colour but not variety. As Leif says, yoghurt and other natural additives have proved useful (see link below).
Depending on the acidity of the rock, lime could either benefit lichens or kill them!

And if you are proposing to do this on ancient monoliths, wouldn't it be better to wait for a natural community to redevelop? It's a bit like the problem we have in Britain, with well-meaning but frankly rather unintelligent people sowing "wildflower seed" all over the place, thinking they are aiding "conservation" when in actual fact they are causing yet another problem.

Much of this answer is, I admit, speculative. Sorry also if it seems a bit negative in places, which is not my intention. It may well be that you are making valuable discoveries that will help others facing similar vandalism problems.

I recommend looking at the British Lichen Society's website, notably:

http://www.thebls.org.uk/mmade.htm

Alan

build your house upon t3h rock

Leif, thanks for the input. lactic acid bacteria interest me a great deal and i wonder why buttermilk is so popular for moss cultivation. and what is unnatural about what i'm doing here?

Silver said:

Hi Cakes,

Click to expand...

heigh ho Silver!

Silver said:

Sorry

Click to expand...

I'm rather sorry also. Frankly you pissed me off big time.

Silver said:

if it seems a bit negative in places, which is not my intention.

Click to expand...

if it's not your intention and you realize it and you can't be bothered to edit your post, then we have a serious problem.

i'll edit mine but you're still getting a full load because you knew better

Silver said:

I feel that you are making a few assumptions here, though you are also asking questions that I certainly cannot answer myself, and which I am not sure even have known answers.

Click to expand...

I seek to discover those answers that people like to know. Whether they are known by others yet is but a small technicality.

Silver said:

But the guiding thing to remember with lichens is that they do everything slowly. The grow slowly. They die slowly.

Click to expand...

and yet later in this post you express suprise at how a thriving colony was just there one day and gone the next.

The guiding thing to remember about gardening is that i can grow anything anywhere and always will. I'll teach you if you want.

There's one tech that may especially apply to lichen since lichen can gather nutrition from the air. We can encourage a plant's stomata to open up larger with certain treatments (oscillating frequencies between 4000-6000 megahertz). Stomata's being open more means that plants can gather more nutrition from the air. One plant grown this way is in the Guiness Book; it's a flower that is normally 6" but grew to 80'.

The highest rate of photosynthesis can occur in plants at 5650 nm but if you change the spectrum to 5300 then photosynthesis only procedes at 10% of capacity.

notice any similarities in the above #'s?

btw~ the fact (if it is a fact) that lichens die slowly is quite encouraging. it might mean that lichen who have had paint sprayed on them may not immeadiately perish but may be uncovered and allowed to flourish.

There is a Lot to know about gardening. Always will be.

Silver said:

The fact that a lichen looks the same days or weeks after treatment does not mean it has survived.

Click to expand...

it doesn't mean that the lichen was killed by the treatment either (unless you duplicate it several times, then you can think it probably does)

Silver said:

One of the classic investigations of lichens' sensitivity to pollutants was carried out back in the 1960s by Erik Skye in Sweden. He placed a leaking sulphur dioxide cylinder near a tree trunk. Grass around the cylinder went yellow and died back within days, but the lichens looked just a little corroded. It was only in the following winter, half a year later, that it became clear that the lichens HAD all died. Nor indeed was there any recolonisation of the tree trunk even a couple of years later.

Click to expand...

Your story is unclear to me. The sulphur was allowed to sit next to the tree for a half year/several years? because that would be an awfully tough condition for just about anything to deal with. Furthermore, just because the lichens were exposed on a certain day does not mean that they died that day. The lichens may well not have died until the next year. Possibly from an unrelated cause. Perhaps they had lived out their lives as usual but simply did not recolonize because the area was covered in sulpher(?). Sulphur is not an ordinary "corrosive". It is (one of) the strongest fumigants we use for food preservation and to combat plant disease. The fungal exteriors of lichen are quite a bit like the fungi that we have traditionally targeted with sulphur. Soulfer is also known as a long acting agent so the lingering residue on the tree is to be expected by anyone familiar with the age old use of this agricultural tool.

Dude, if the stuff killed grass in days then it was serious and I'd say the lichen came through pretty well. It's very tough to kill grass.

I would be curious as to what that scientist was trying to find out. and if he knew what chem he was using or if it just happened to be the one in his lab that was leaking that day..

Silver said:

Lichens are sensitive to a variety of cleaning agents and great damage to lichen communities can result from their use. As I have said, the damage may not be immediately apparent. One of my various "hats" is that of lichen recorder for one of our nature reserves. It contains one of the few remaining fenland windpumps (looks like a windmill but is smaller and was never used to mill grain). Admittedly it was moved from its original site but it is still an important relic. I was delighted one day to find that the concrete base of the windpump had developed a rich community of small saxicolous lichens, especially various Caloplaca species. Most would have been new to the reserve list, except that I was not officially recording lichens at the time, had other responsibilities that day, and Caloplaca species need full-time attention!
So, last spring, I went back to the windpump, ready to start work on this community, to find that there was no trace of any lichens on the structure. Not one! In the intervening period, the wooden parts of the windpump had been treated with preservative, a very necessary task, but the concrete base had not been touched (or not officially). Most likely some of the preservative ran down onto the base and the contractors attempted some cleaning, probably just spreading the preservative around further. Or maybe it was just the fumes.

Click to expand...

"the contractors attempted some cleaning, probably just spreading the preservative around further"

"attempted"? "probably"?

welcome to respect for Craftsmen/women 1A

1. preservative doesn't "run" (try applying it sometime)
2. Craftsmen know to remove those substances if they want to (how do you clean your brushes when you work Silver?)
3. btw, if you had believed I was a Craftswoman and gave me the respect you should have then you would know that you had just read a report of a terribly persistant substance being safely removed
4. maybe those Craftsmen were doing their job Very well and relocated the lichen because they figured that growths were not to be encouraged upon an historic structure such as that

Silver said:

So be very careful with any chemicals and organic solvents. I'd be surprised if H2O2 (hydrogen peroxide) could be used, even though certain, specialised wood-decay fungi actually secrete it to aid in wood breakdown.

Click to expand...

H2O2 is regularly used in the cultivation of fungi (and other plants). It can increase a plant's growth rate by 1/3.

You can soak the entire base of a mushroom in it for the entire time that it is growing. Same for other plants.

I didn't ask whether it was okay to nuke San Francisco, I asked if anyone had an idea how much water and oxygen our microbial life forms could withstand.

Thanks for the trivia tho, it was fun to think of fun guys oxidizing their own carbon.

I suggest you indulge in trivia more since you obviously have a flair for details but lack the grasp of any fundamental principles of agriculture at this time.

Silver said:

As for cultivation and effectively "constructing" lichens - most lichen fungi have very precise relationships with their algae.

Click to expand...

Yea, and not only that, they also grow in certain patterns sometimes depending on which symbiont they hook up with. The art possibilities are immense.

Silver said:

There are exceptions,

Click to expand...

forget it

I worked at a National Park in New Hampshire, Saint Gaudens . He had some beautiful gardens and walks. One of the walks had steps with moss and Lichens but needed work. the work being completed removed the moss and lichens. However the mason who did the work mixed up some water and cow manure and painted this on the steps and not instantly but within a year the age ,ie lichens and moss, was coming back to the steps. Don't know why the solution worked but it did.

The one thing I'll add to my post is clarification that Erik Skye's sulphur dioxide pollution application lasted two weeks - a vital element of the story.

Beyond that - well, I provided feedback, a link to further information and an attempt to indicate the first set of biological errors. If this did not in fact prove helpful, then so be it.

Cakes: IMO your follow up is completely out of order. I thought that Alan's post was very interesting and informative and, as ever, polite. Because someone adds to, or contradicts your assertions is no reason to be abusive. None of us are right all of the time, or know everything, and that includes thee and me, though sometimes I feel I lie too far to the other extreme. :king:

Leif

Thanks, johnruss, that's interesting to hear about the manure. From your report, it sounds like the craftsman didn't even feel a need for the inclusion of lichen spores in his mix. He was familiar enough with his medium as to feel confident the lichen would easily repopulate if only given the tools tu do sow.

ha ha ha
i just realized whathappened in my life because of the story you shared. yea untu you dude, we just proved the story of how to cultivate lichen Big Time.

the lichen have overtaken the retaining wall in back of my house this last year. i've kind of marveled at it a bit but just now i considered the fact that i grew a bunch of organic herbs in pots next to that wall (there's still a few pots of soil out there).

i bet those pots of soil and organisms seeded that wall.

This house has been here for 27+ years and there are no old lichen on that wall like there are on the thousands of encrusted rocks down in the cow pastures. Actually, it's billions of rocks (a volcano exploded next door).

whoa~! Yea~!
lichen.com was right. They said that the main reason lichen have trouble reproducing is because they don't get hooked up with the proper companions as often as they might.

The propagation techniques aren't actually unknown, it's just that the literature so far seems pretty much confined to observations made by the guys with microscopes. they are like you Silver, they can name the bacteria and the mycelliac adolescent or whatever but they haven't got around to the manure and such (the large scale field trials), the only study I've read so far, and it was relatively recent, the guys were strapping, so as not to harm the leaves, Bless their little scientific Hearts {Happy Valentine's Day All Of You} anyway, they were strapping actual microscope slides to the leaves of plants in the jungle somewhere. Left the slides on the leaves for year and concluded that lichens could be cultivated.

bless those hardworking Farmer's hearts too, thy know the tech even though they don't have the microscopes and they taught their kids, who grew up to be Craftsmen.

instead of Craftschildren?

ha ha

anyway, i'm getting a lichen mural~!
and i have something to post at t3h STONEPAGES

thanks Guys~!

heigh ho Silver, I admire your ability to recognize the different kinds of lichens. I wish I had the details that you do at my disposal for two (and probably more) very important reasons.

1. If my plan is successful and colonies of lichen need attention, then you are the one who will be able to identify them and thereby enable us to connect to the massive bank of knowledge that we do have and so be more enabled to care for or cultivate our liken' for lichen.

2. My (new) personal interest in lichen art really hinges quite a bit on knowing the different types of lichen that are out there and the various symbiotic relationships that they develop. You know those names that I want to know. You probably know what colors they come in and what shape they have been seen to grow in and the scientific name of the bacteria (or whatever) that they have been noted as being associated with. It could take me years to know all that stuff and I might never get around to it but you already know.

sew, I'm canna lichen to kiss and make up

of course i guess i might still take you both to school in pm's

Interesting Information Alan, thanks for sharing.

you too forum snob

Silver, my man, do you happen to know anything about hairy cap moss?

i'm trying to be friends with the guy who gave me the downlow on using oil to remove paint and he's trying to grow a moss garden. i hooked him up with all i got but he also mentioned there seemed to be a difference in the varieties and we're wondering about the details of it all.

We found a moss that looks like hairy cap moss but here's the deal, he's wanting to cultivate a special kind but the kind by his house is a little different than the kind he wants to cultivate. We could really use somebody to whip out that big 10 inch encyclopedia and clue us in. Yea, I'm going surfing for it when I leave hear so let me here from you? and save me hours of looking for it?
Let me just quote him, cause I'm not sure if I really get it

posted at www.allexperts.com
question 4259722

ANSWER
Thank you for the trove of information. I have studied the hairy cap moss and have decided it is the stuff I sometimes see here. The difference I notice is that the hairs slant upward from the stem. The stuff I am trying to identify, the hairs slant down. Done some looking at evergreen trees. Spruces and others have branches that also slant upwards. Funny, ask any child to draw a Christmas Tree, and the branches will slant down. The hairy cap moss looks like the trees rather than what I had thought the trees looked like.

The area here is underlaid with limestone, giving soil high in calcium and pH as well as a heavy clay. Some moss thrives here. There is a tree plantation near here about 1/4 mile by a 1/2 mile. I walk my one Lab there most days. There are mown trails through it. Many of them are covered with moss and lichens thriving in the shade. Maybe I need to rethink the areas of my yard too shady for grass to thrive. Maybe learn to do like the bank where I have encouraged Virginia creeper as a ground cover.

Your question today meant a lot. It remind me I am helping good people, and they appreciate it, jumping at the chance to help me in an area they know. I had another question attacking me today. More than anything else, I am an expert on the dogs I love. I have been sharing what I know here and some other forums. There are trolls out there lacking a life that want to be somebody by being a great internet dog expert. Trouble is, they are too deluded to realize how little they know. They are quick to attack anybody that posts answers disagreeing with them. I am one of the few good people they haven't run off. The net is a much poorer place because of them.

so what do you think Silver? i personally never even thought bout the hairs on the moss stem going up or down. I'm going to have to spend hours on this maybe.

and what do you think about the fact that he's right, we hand out faulty info; for instance, I told him most moss prefers acidic soil and here he has moss growing all about his house in lime soil and if he hadn't noticed that he might have given up on the idea of moss garden based on what I told him the moss' requirements were.

just like I might have given up on moss cleaning and lichen growing from the response i got from you Dr. Silver. if I wasn't 40 (it still made me cry)

Which brings up my main point, not only do we need to keep the info clean but we need to NEVER discourage others. after all they might know and not even know it (hey do any of you know anything Really? no. nothing you wouldn't give up for The answer). not to mention that THEY HAVE A RIGHT TO JOY TOO and if you discourage them in the least they can wilt and never bloom in that field of study again.

killing our babies and ourselves too.

consider that your pm

discussion?
I'd like to have an answer for LabMan, on both questions and I don't know what to say.. .

Cakes said:

Leif, thanks for the input. lactic acid bacteria interest me a great deal and i wonder why buttermilk is so popular for moss cultivation. and what is unnatural about what i'm doing here?



heigh ho Silver!



I'm rather sorry also. Frankly you pissed me off big time.



if it's not your intention and you realize it and you can't be bothered to edit your post, then we have a serious problem.

i'll edit mine but you're still getting a full load because you knew better



I seek to discover those answers that people like to know. Whether they are known by others yet is but a small technicality.



and yet later in this post you express suprise at how a thriving colony was just there one day and gone the next.

The guiding thing to remember about gardening is that i can grow anything anywhere and always will. I'll teach you if you want.

There's one tech that may especially apply to lichen since lichen can gather nutrition from the air. We can encourage a plant's stomata to open up larger with certain treatments (oscillating frequencies between 4000-6000 megahertz). Stomata's being open more means that plants can gather more nutrition from the air. One plant grown this way is in the Guiness Book; it's a flower that is normally 6" but grew to 80'.

The highest rate of photosynthesis can occur in plants at 5650 nm but if you change the spectrum to 5300 then photosynthesis only procedes at 10% of capacity.

notice any similarities in the above #'s?

btw~ the fact (if it is a fact) that lichens die slowly is quite encouraging. it might mean that lichen who have had paint sprayed on them may not immeadiately perish but may be uncovered and allowed to flourish.

There is a Lot to know about gardening. Always will be.



it doesn't mean that the lichen was killed by the treatment either (unless you duplicate it several times, then you can think it probably does)



Your story is unclear to me. The sulphur was allowed to sit next to the tree for a half year/several years? because that would be an awfully tough condition for just about anything to deal with. Furthermore, just because the lichens were exposed on a certain day does not mean that they died that day. The lichens may well not have died until the next year. Possibly from an unrelated cause. Perhaps they had lived out their lives as usual but simply did not recolonize because the area was covered in sulpher(?). Sulphur is not an ordinary "corrosive". It is (one of) the strongest fumigants we use for food preservation and to combat plant disease. The fungal exteriors of lichen are quite a bit like the fungi that we have traditionally targeted with sulphur. Soulfer is also known as a long acting agent so the lingering residue on the tree is to be expected by anyone familiar with the age old use of this agricultural tool.

Dude, if the stuff killed grass in days then it was serious and I'd say the lichen came through pretty well. It's very tough to kill grass.

I would be curious as to what that scientist was trying to find out. and if he knew what chem he was using or if it just happened to be the one in his lab that was leaking that day..


"the contractors attempted some cleaning, probably just spreading the preservative around further"

"attempted"? "probably"?

welcome to respect for Craftsmen/women 1A

1. preservative doesn't "run" (try applying it sometime)
2. Craftsmen know to remove those substances if they want to (how do you clean your brushes when you work Silver?)
3. btw, if you had believed I was a Craftswoman and gave me the respect you should have then you would know that you had just read a report of a terribly persistant substance being safely removed
4. maybe those Craftsmen were doing their job Very well and relocated the lichen because they figured that growths were not to be encouraged upon an historic structure such as that



H2O2 is regularly used in the cultivation of fungi (and other plants). It can increase a plant's growth rate by 1/3.

You can soak the entire base of a mushroom in it for the entire time that it is growing. Same for other plants.

I didn't ask whether it was okay to nuke San Francisco, I asked if anyone had an idea how much water and oxygen our microbial life forms could withstand.

Thanks for the trivia tho, it was fun to think of fun guys oxidizing their own carbon.

I suggest you indulge in trivia more since you obviously have a flair for details but lack the grasp of any fundamental principles of agriculture at this time.



Yea, and not only that, they also grow in certain patterns sometimes depending on which symbiont they hook up with. The art possibilities are immense.

forget it

Click to expand...

Blimey! that is a bit harsh!

Perhaps there is a Language or cultural problem here because silvers submission seemed helpful and fascinating to me, and I couldn't find a trace of malace in it anywhere.

Colin.