Blog post #7: Lynndale Park by Selena and Samar
- The Height of the string around the tree trunk at eye-level: 1.17m
- The circumference of the trunk at this height: 1.62m
- Tree map (pictured below)
- Species of tree: Big Leaf Maple
- Best direction for moss: South side of the tree
- Best direction for lichens: Southwest side of tree
- Texture of bark: Smooth rather than ridged but still rough/scratchy texture.
The side of the tree that had the most light was the northwest side and the warmest side of the tree is the east side. The side of the tree that is most likely to have the most rain and wind is the west side. We think that the lichen or moss are more frequently growing on one side of a tree rather than another because of the amount of light and moisture that hits different sides of the tree. One of the ways you could measure the light, temperature, or wetness could be by looking at the area around it and the amount of lichen and moss in a certain area. There does seem to be the same mosses and lichen (and the same amount) on the trunk at both waist level and knee level. We identified dust lichen on the tree and it seemed to prefer the shaded, sheltered part. In addition, we also identified what seems to be Yellow moss which is common in maples and it prefers more shade. The growh pattern on other trees did not completely match but there were many similartities in the growth. There was also a variety of patterns. We do think that the kind of bark does make a difference to lichens and mosses because they can have a preferance and they survive different on different types of bark. Our hypothesis is that the amount of lichen or moss present on a tree depends on the bark,the type of tree, and the amount of moisture and sunlight it recieves.
Questions:
Samar: Why do lichens versus moss prefer either light rather than shade?
Selena: What is the most common type of lichen and moss in the state of Washington?
Nice work guys! I particularly like your question about wanting to know the most common type of lichen. I discovered there are thousands of different lichens and more are being discovered every day. Researched quite a bit about lichen but nothing noted as one that shows up the most in the pnw.
ReplyDeleteI find it weird that your results were somewhat the opposite of our groups results. All of the lichens on our tree avoided the west side and gravitated towards the east. Also we really had no moss higher up unlike your tree; it was all located at the bottom of our tree.
ReplyDeleteI think the reason they prefer light rather than shade is that they don't have a vascular system like other plants to process nutrients and distribute them, so they need that direct sunlight?
ReplyDeleteSame as Brandon, I was really stumped trying to understand how our results were so different, its very interesting. I would also be interested to know what the most popular lichen is in the PNW!
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