I hope you're lichen these photos (i'm so sorry)

Buying a new lichen field guide and then going out to try to identify as many as possible was amazingly humbling. I'm gonna need someone to hold my hand through this process, because it's more difficult than I thought. If you are good at this, I need your help--it might be good to know these are all on Great Blue Hill, on a wet day. Ready? Here goes:


Porpidia crustulata, Concentric boulder lichen.
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Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory

This is Don, he works at the Blue Hill Meteorological Observatory. I didn't know this when he came along on the Urban Nature Walk at Great Blue Hill. All I knew was that he knew his way around the hill well, so I let him lead the way. When we got to the top of the hill, there was the observatory. He led us in and showed us around.

The instrument he is touching is a Campbell–Stokes sunlight recorder. There was another one on the roof of the observatory. It consists of a crystal ball mounted in a bracket that holds specially shaped strips of paper below. When the sunlight hits the crystal, it focuses on the paper, burning a line across as the earth rotates. You can see a bunch of the papers in the lower part of the photograph.
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