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  • From: Heide Hermary <heidehermary@pacificcoast.net>
  • To: permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [permaculture] Turning Deserts into Woodlands
  • Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2002 09:57:25 -0700

These types of lichens are an important part of the nitrogen cycle, as they fix nitrogen from the air and produce their own carbohydrates: they do not take anything from the tree at all. When they fall to the ground they return the nitrogen to the soil. Out here we use them as a pollution indicator, as they are very sensitive to air pollution, and their disappearance is a sign of ecosystems in trouble. I can't for the life of me imagine what is to be gained by removing them from the tree.
Heide

Kirby Fry wrote:

Rick,

So the usnea is a lichen?

Yes, a friend of ours was just about to buy a home and the big oaks in the
front yard were covered with lichens. They consulted me and I said it may
indicate some decline of the oaks, they did seem to be more heavily covered
than the other trees next door, but that I wouldn't touch the lichens or
worry about it too much - just let the baby oaks grow up underneath.

Of course they had to call an urban tree pruiner who for about $800 U.S.
would go and pull down most of the lichens while pruining the trees. They
ended up not getting the house, but it goes to show the austere sort of
ecosystems we are accustomed to and seek.

Kirby


----- Original Message -----
From: Rick Valley <bamboogrove@cmug.com>
To: <permaculture@lists.ibiblio.org>
Sent: Monday, September 02, 2002 2:35 PM
Subject: Re: [permaculture] Turning Deserts into Woodlands



From: "Kirby Fry" :
I would love to study and better understand the relationship between
precipitation and vegetative covers.

Mollison got me looking for examples. I've never been able to get photos,
but I have seen recently cut areas devoid of cloud when adjacent forest is
covered, including a HUGE cut in Southern Beech forest in NZ (1500 acres

at

least) that was the only open spot in the cloud cover in the mountains.
Here, the big trees (1-2 meter) Douglas Firs) behind my house drip
constantly on foggy nights or days.

One friend remembers the stream thru his farm flowing all year, before the
forest above was converted to grazing. Now he pumps from his well to allow
the tree frogs time to mature in a small dam.

Another can barely keep her garden watered from the creek, when the guy

she

bought from used to keep 6 big rainbirds blasting out over the whole 10
acres of pasture, 25 years ago. But the floods are worse now; county road
culverts aren't big enough. Nearly the entire catchment above has been
clearcut; the first cut which went into the 1930's, was selective; no one
wasted time on little trees or making huge slash piles.

I had an ecologist at OSU tell me that my ideas were crazy, trees wouldn't
improve the situation on Willamette valley low elevation land (as opposed

to

studies showing fog drip up in the Cascade mountains) The next day I saw a
trapped cloud downwind of a "shelter belt", the narrow line of trees in a
gully. Weren't any other clouds anywhere else down on the land in that
wind...

They call lichens "barba de palo" in Spanish; ask any hirsute male what
happens with his facial hair in a moist wind. Dripping wet. People always
ask me if they should pull the Usnea off their trees, if it's harmful?

-Rick



















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