Lichens= Mysterious

****Lichen****

 Finding what topic in my research is hard. My classmate decided that he will take lichens as his topic me as someone curious who have no idea what is lichens decided to search it from the net. Turns out during my search that lichens is a very interesting species. I decided to follow my classmate in making my topic as lichen in my research but in a different approach because lichen definitely catches my thirst of knowing.


 We decided that our specimen collection would be in the provinces of Banaue, Mountain Province and Benguet. There's so many different types of lichens I have seen everywhere during our trek with each provinces.

 Because we are trekking in Sagada, Mountain Province just after a heavy storm we can get branches of pine trees full of lichens everywhere as shown in the picture above. Hulog ng langit (pine tree).

Foliose lichens are said to be a leaf like type of lichen that can be easily get from its substrate.

Usneas in branch of a tree above picture are the green one's that look similar to a grass, shrub or if your imagination is more deeper a green beard (O.O) that's why it belong to the fruticose type.

 There are many lichens that is impossible to collect in its substrate without getting the substate with the lichens first. Unfortunately I don't have the right equipment to get those type of lichens during our collection so I disregard it to my thesis. (T.T) huhu..

After our collection of each lichens we put it to a brown paper bag. In Manila we put the lichens that we manage to collect in the refrigerator of our laboratory for a test the following days.
There are many kinds of methods that we can use in order to identify certain lichens through species level. These are spot test, microcrstal test, paper chromatograpy, TLC and HPLC. I decided to use the first two the spot test and microcrystal test because it is more affordable and easier to make.

I think lichens are one tough organisms because unlike higher plants (lichens are considered to be a lower plant with bryophytes) the lichens that I collected manage to survive many days of my experimentation. Although they are dry.

Lichens are a very hard species to identify without the help of an expert. Unfortunately present lichenologist in the Philippines are so few. I can't find lichenologist that can help me confirm the species of lichens ( Too bad!).
Lichens can be used as a bioindicator for pollution. That's why in cities with many vehicle going like Manila lichens are rare or nonexistent to find specially fruticose type of lichens because those type of lichens are more sensitive. Still until now many people don't know what lichens is. I tried asking strangers about lichens and they don't have any idea what that is. Well too bad for lichens it seems that they are not popular but it's okay because they  make up for it with being mysterious.^_^

ciao.