2086 Field trip & picnic – what a day!

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!

Lichen love

Some basic lichen info, for those of you new to this wonderful world!

https://simple.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lichen

http://www.ohiomosslichen.org/Lichenology-101.pdf

Here some details on human uses of lichen in different places
https://www.earthlife.net/lichens/intro.html

Bibliographical Database Of The Human Uses Of Lichens
http://www.lichen.com/usetype.html

Artist introducing Spanish lichen to Nida, on foam blog
https://fo.am/blog/2013/11/23/assisted-migration/

https://books.google.lt/books?id=-prNplgZg_MC&pg=PA19&lpg=PA19&dq=lithuania+lichen+extinct&source=bl&ots=rC_zLMQkKQ&sig=N11DRoqBzQWuYvYqfWAH5crGRYY&hl=lt&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjx5u6e9JvbAhWGBSwKHRaiC7sQ6AEIaTAM#v=onepage&q=lithuania%20lichen%20extinct&f=false

Lichen study relating to cormorants (could not DWNLOAD)
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/268981894_Pine_forest_lichens_under_eutrophication_generated_by_a_great_cormorant_colony

Not very reliable
https://www.homeopathyschool.com/the-school/provings/reindeer-moss/

Lichens collected radioactivity after Chernobyl in Lithuania
https://books.google.lt/books?id=EH3LBQAAQBAJ&pg=PA106&lpg=PA106&dq=chernobyl+lichen+lithuania&source=bl&ots=KeZLWoMnIi&sig=nlBHA3tFLYhX5apFxm8Y6ozxbiw&hl=lt&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwjjv-zwu6vbAhUDApoKHcgbD044ChDoAQhPMAY#v=onepage&q&f=false

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