by Linda Martinson Blue Ridge Naturalist

March has been on the chilly side with lots and lots of rain but thankfully, not much snow. During the hushed and rain-soaked months of January and February and into early March, I spent several walks watching for intriguing lichens. Lichens aren’t at all bothered by cold weather, and they love rainy weather during which they break dormancy and absorb 3 to 35 times their weight in water. In the winter, there is more available light for lichens and when you see them standing out clearly against the trees, they are busy photosynthesizing the light while they can absorb water from the air. Ponder the lichens; they are neither plant nor animal, but instead a unique mutualistic symbiosis of at least two different kinds of fungi, algae and bacteria. Together they form rather than grow, and they can go where none of the composite organisms could go alone. (See my February 2015 Nature Notes for more information about lichens although it may be outdated, because scientific discoveries about the 20,000+ species of lichens are being made all the time!)

by Linda Martinson

There are many welcome signs of spring in the Blue Ridge Mountains, but certainly one of the loudest is the chorus of mating spring peepers. Here we have the northern subspecies of spring peepers (Pseudacris crucifer), small chorus frogs that are widespread throughout the eastern USA and Canada, where ever they have the right habitat. And they are small, about the size of a paper clip, so although their chorus of calls is loud, they are seldom seen. It is indeed a challenge to find a small frog that could sit completely on half your thumb and that hides in the thick debris of the forest floor or clinging to the stems of dense plants in marshy areas.