Tag: extinction

Bulletin Summer 2086 out now in ‘Nida Art Colony: On Lines & Rituals’

Posted on by Tessa

A little delayed (again!), but our 2086 Summer Bulletin is finally out for all to read and enjoy. It’s nestled in a new publication edited by our old friend Vytautas Michelkevicius, Nida Art Colony: On Lines & Rituals, and released late last year through Vilnius Academy of Arts, Neringa (2087). Dr. Michelkevicius was part of the Society’s earliest days at the beginning of this century, and it’s lovely to see some familiar faces in this revised and reissued final installment of the excellent Nida Art Colony logbooks.

You can download a free digital copy for yourself or your local e-library here.

It looks a little like this…

Convention 2087 Wrap

Posted on by Tessa

The T. Rudzinskaitė Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society held its Annual Convention 27-29 January this year at Linnaeus University in snowy Växjö, Sweden. Society co-convenors Tessa Zettel and Dr. Sumugan Sivanesan delivered the official Opening Address on Day One, with Dr. Sivanesan beaming in via spectra-link from the Convention’s Satellite program in the former west.

Highlights of the 2087 Convention: ‘Speculative Flummery and Cosmic Co-becomings’ included a keynote from the President of the Therolinguistics Association about the group’s recent trek to Pike’s Peak to decipher lichen lyrics on its rockface, a report from participants in our Forever Together vocational study program at Nefertiti Health and Beauty Salons (right here in Växjö), and a hands-on dia-sporing workshop run by some of our inter-pagan members.

A fortuitous overlap in university scheduling meant our attendees also had the opportunity to enjoy the tail end of another conference, ‘Multispecies Storytelling in Intermedial Practices’, and a seventy-hour-long more-than-non-human dance marathon to celebrate the 70th anniversary of leading intergalactic research group Dance for Plants.

Speculative flummery was specially prepared each day by final year students from the University’s School of Post-lithoculinary Arts. A full report on convention proceedings will be published in book form later this year.

The T. Rudzinskaite Memorial Amateur Lichenologists Society is supported by the NSW Government through Create NSW.

2086 Field trip & picnic – what a day!

Posted on by Tessa

Meeting point at Nida carpark

After many weeks traipsing through the dunes, forest and beach of the Curonian Spit, collecting spruce shoots, nettles, raspberry leaves and mosquito bites, talking to local biologists and foragers, concocting jellies and pancakes and fermented sodas, we finally hosted this year’s annual field trip & picnic on 22 June 2086!

Thanks to everyone who came along – amateur lichenologists, artists, interpagans and everything in between. For those of you unfortunate enough to have missed out on this special bumper edition (back on Lithuanian soil for the first time in decades!), here’s a taste of what the Society got up to.

Follow the fish!

Toasting the locally extinct arctic raspberry, and the miraculously alive-and-well wild strawberry, with wild strawberry kvass (fermented soda).

UFO landing site: space lichen, astrobiology and Cold War luxuries.

Blinis with un-caviar. Each amateur lichenologist dollops a spoonful of un-caviar onto a neighbour’s blini while saying ‘kosmičeskije sso-sstanivlenija‘ (‘in cosmic co-becomings’).

Flummery! Made with agar and blueberries from the old forest. With a side of Permian mass extinction and microplastic futures.

The Great Tuning Fork

A full report from the Society will be published in the forthcoming Nida Art Colony Log: On Rites and Terrabytes, due for release later this year.

Big cheers to Sepideh Ardalani for helping with food wizardry, Diana Pusko for foraging advice, the interpagan intentional community for their extraordinary un-caviar, and Nida Art Colony for letting us crash their symposium! See you somewhere else next year!

wild strawberry kvass

Posted on by Tessa

More experimenting with kvass, a fermented soda popular in Russia that can be made with any number of things.

Our second attempt uses wild strawberries – Fragaria vesca, ‘fraisier des bois’ – collected around the beach at Nida. Evidence from archaeological excavations suggests that Fragaria vesca has been consumed by humans since the Stone Age http://intarch.ac.uk/journal/issue1/tomlinson/part2.html#S711

Recipe from Sandor Katz here

Seems you basically just cover the berries in sugar water, 1:1.5 ratio, and wait.
Let’s see..!

We would have like to have tried this with the arctic raspberry or arctic bramble, the ‘superior berry’ (rubus arcticus) of the sub-arctic region, but that’s now extinct in Lithuania. In other places it’s also on the decline – in Finland the decrease in forest fires have adversely affected it (it likes the nutrients from forest ash and post-fire gets a better run than competitors); while in Estonia and Scandinavia, agricultural and forestry developments which drain soil have had an impact, since it likes wet soil and in dry conditions is overgrown and replaced by other species.


 [image from https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/7/79/Rubus_arcticus.jpg/440px-Rubus_arcticus.jpg ]

https://www.balticforestry.mi.lt/bf/PDF_Articles/2011-17[2]/Vool_2011%2017(2)_170_178.pdf

RARE PLANT SPECIES IN CURONIAN SPIT THREATENED BY PORT ACTIVITIES & the big sea ferries

Posted on by Tessa

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tripolium_pannonicum

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lysimachia_maritima

A kind of arrowgrass

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Triglochin_maritima

 

https://www.sodininkyste.lt/baltijine-stokle-cakile-baltica/

https://www.google.ro/search?q=baltijin%C4%97+stokl%C4%97&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj3876YupHbAhUB3iwKHdiICBcQsAQILQ&biw=1237&bih=655&dpr=2#imgdii=xDTuWKjvtN03XM:&imgrc=j3qgDMVI8SoaFM:

 

http://samogitia.mch.mii.lt/LANKYTINOS_VIETOS/nerija.en.htm

 

http://www.unesco.lt/uploads/file/failai_VEIKLA/kultura/Pasaulio_paveldas%20Lietuvoje/nerija_dok/curonian_spit_nomination_EN.pdf

 

https://content.sciendo.com/view/journals/botlit/22/1/article-p49.xml

 

misc Lithuanian threatened species

Posted on by Tessa

It isn’t just lichen that is threatened in Lithuania these days. Here are some links to other critters also having a hard time of it..

Alien Species on Lithuanian Fund for Nature
http://www.glis.lt/?pid=126

The Noble Beasts of Lithuania
https://www.draugas.org/news/the-noble-beasts-of-lithuania/

Cute european mink now extinct in Lithuania
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/14018/0

European eel
http://www.iucnredlist.org/details/60344/0

Bats which have some situation in lihtuania (according to red list wiki entry)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Barbastelle
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pond_bat

IUCN Red List
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IUCN_Red_List
http://www.iucnredlist.org/search (but difficult to use)

List of mammals in Lithuania (including extinct and endangered ones, ie. certain whales, porpoise etc.)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_mammals_of_Lithuania

Sea holly, a spiky dune plant, aphrodisiac (in UK), supposedly on the Red List here, Eryngium maritimum
http://samogitia.mch.mii.lt/LANKYTINOS_VIETOS/nerija.en.htm
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eryngium_maritimum

“Let the sky rain potatoes;
let it thunder to the tune of Green-sleeves,
hail kissing-comfits and snow eringoes [sea-holly],
let there come a tempest of provocation…” (from a Shakespeare play, can’t remember which)

Very detailed study, well nomination for UNESCO list, including some discussion of rare species (fish, mammals, plants, and birds) here (1999 – super out-of-date. Eg. they refer to something as rare but on IUCN its status is a-ok)
http://www.unesco.lt/uploads/file/failai_VEIKLA/kultura/Pasaulio_paveldas%20Lietuvoje/nerija_dok/curonian_spit_nomination_EN.pdf