What's not to Lichen?

Terrible pun in the title I know, but how do you make lichens sound interesting?

As a matter of fact they are interesting, well I think so anyway. For a start, they don't seem to know quite what they are: they are a mixture of a fungus and a plant. There are up to seventeen thousand different kinds (I won't list them all here) and the different kinds fall into categories with such names as foliose, fruticose, squamulose and crustose - great words to say.

I love the colours - all those greens, greys, yellows, golds, oranges. Good, ancient colours that have been around for centuries.

And that's the other thing - the sense of history. Lichens grow on rocks, old walls, old branches.

I find I keep taking photographs of them.

They give me a comforting sense of the continuity of life and I think they're beautiful.

I like the lizard too.