[Guest]

In a lot of the pictures of natural habitats of orchids and frogs, I noticed a TON of lichen growing on many of the trees and limbs. Also, any time I drive or walk around the mountains here in the Northwest, I see it everywhere.

I don't know the physiology of lichens that well, but I'm curious as to how easy/difficult/successful one would find trying to keep and sustain them in a viv? I was doing some picking around the other day on a tree, and I'm not even sure how you would transplant--it seems the species I was plucking off still had something beneath the bark that I assume would need to be transplanted (or would simply attaching a 'leaf' to bark or wood cause it to reattach itself?) What about spreading spores--would that work, and if so, how would you even go about collecting lichen spores? Or is growth too slow with most lichen that I would be pointless to even try introducing live species--would it be better to just collect some and add it to the enclosure dead?

I'm interested to hear what some of you have to say, and hopefully it will lead to another step in creating enclosures that mimic the natural habitat that much more closely.

 

[Guest]

lichen

lichen grows about a centimetre every ten years with the exception of some rare fast growing varieties

 

[Ryan]

I remember someone on the Naturalistic Vivaria group had lichen growing in his viv, i think Ben Eiben(Spelling)

 

[Guest]

Hey Ryan, is that group still active? I tried finding it yesterday (have run across it before) but couldn't find the sign-up page anywhere.

 

[mbrutger]

I have some branches in my 75 gallon with lichen all over them. They look great and the lichen is doing fine.