OT- Moss/Lichens??

Re: OT- Moss/Lichens??

Rum

Pretty much yes.

There is a tendency for more moss and lichens to grow on trees north sides because it tends to be a wetter environment so they can more easily grow there. This is, in some old books, touted as a pathfinding skill. However I've found it to be wildly unreliable because in some micro climates the south side of the trees are more protected and the moss and lichens grow better there.

Side note, we've been collecting lichens for dye stock (for wool dying) and found this book to be super useful for identifying lichens in our area - I'm not sure if there are similar books for other regions of the country though.

http://osupress.oregonstate.edu/book/macrolichens-of-pacific-northwest

Re: OT- Moss/Lichens??

Tom Norton

I am looking out, to the South, at our woods. Very few trees have this abundance of "growth" on the North side just these few trees. Can it be an indication of health?

Re: OT- Moss/Lichens??

Dick Coers

I always thought it was because of no direct sunlight.

Re: OT- Moss/Lichens??

Rum

Well moss and lichen are generally just indicative of good air quality and appropriate moisture and light levels for that species (plus probably some other co-factors).

As far as I've been able to tell its not really indicative of anything other than good growing conditions for that moss/lichen.

Although many lichens grow on trees, there doesn't appear to be much that it says about the trees themselves. Some lichens grow preferentially on some tree types but that seems to be mostly due to the type of habitat the tree provides for it. The trees are used as a support structure and there may be some minimal usage of minerals, etc.. from the bark but they don't actually attack the underlying structure of the tree (unlike mushrooms or fungal infections which are indications of either poor tree health or an aggressive fungus depending). Some lichens will slowly eat rock and other similar substrates but the rate is really really slow so the trees tend to re-generate the bark layer much faster than that.

There is some evidence that there may be some cross benefit though as lichens and moss will grab onto airborn moisture that could otherwise be lost.

There may be some other cross species interactions I'm unaware of though as lichens are actually incredibly complicated little things. For instance it was just recently (within the last couple of years) discovered that lichens are actually three species in most cases there is also a yeast involved as well as the traditionally known fungus plus alga of cyanobacteria symbiosis (the yeast turns out to be a critical element in some of the lichen based dyes - which were made for thousands of years)

OT OT - dye

John K Jordan

Have you ever tried dye from Osage Orange wood? A llama/alpaca friend here tells me it is supposed to make a good fiber dye. I wonder if it will hold the yellow color or if it will slowly change to brown like the wood itself.

Perhaps it's just a matter of using the proper mordant. If so, can you use a mordant on wood? (Yikes, I just had a deja vu moment - did I ask you this a couple of years ago?!)

JKJ

Re: OT- Moss/Lichens??

Mike Farinella

Me too. ????

Re: OT OT - dye

John Veerkamp

OO makes a very strong color fast yellow dye. I used to do natural dyeing demonstrations. I used sawdust or small chips. The wood needs to be boiled to extract the color. For good yellow it must be prepared in a non-reactive pot. Stainless steel or a porcelain pot with no chips. Iron in contact will act like a mordant and cause OO to be olive.(OO dye was used for Army green until after WWII) . Natural dyeing is a festinating study and even wood working related. Many other woods have been used for dye properties for centuries.

Re: OT OT - dye

Rum

We had some luck with alum as a pre-mordant on wool, reportedly tin works as well (for a somewhat different color). The base color was a bit more dark orange (or something .. my "color naming" capability makes LOML cringe).

I can't say we've used the wool long enough to make a strong statement of how colorfast it is, but the literature indicates its quite good.

This mostly mirrors our experience, although our alum mordanted one wasn't quite that dark.. I think we might not have used enough osage... maybe..

https://www.folkfibers.com/blogs/news/7250546-natural-dyes-osage-orange

I've been wanting to try logwood as well but haven't had time.

Another dye we recently tried (so again a bit early for colorfast statements... ask me in 20 years LOL) is chestnut hulls (the outer burrs not the nut covers). Without any mordant that gave a really nice golden color. I've put the sample through two washings and so far so good. I have a large box we collected of these so we're intending to try that with some other mordants and see how it goes come spring (my last-fall project was re-vamping the old hot-tub gazeebo into a dye studio).

The problem with trying to dye wood is that cellulose doesn't uptake color the same way as protein fibers. I think you can get some colors but our experiments with cotton (as a vaguely close proxy) has been that it both lacks color fastness and doesn't take color nearly as well. I suspect ~most~ dyes that work on cellulose will work on wood.. There may be some cases where you can use other things as a stain with a top coat to protect it.. again not sure on how stable the colors will be there.

We haven't tried the lichen dyes on cotton yet.. the lichen dyes are pretty significantly different in behaviour than most natural dyes so they're pretty exciting to play with. In particular some of them are ammonia extraction and give (colorfast!!) bright reds and purples which are REALLY hard to get with most natural dyes. The downside is that the ammonia extraction takes several months and requires shaking the jars several times per day. So we'll have some more data on the couple we have in progress by sometime in the spring.

Sounds like that old Microsoft joke

Henry Higginbotham

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f289/microsoft-joke-404432.html

Re: OT OT - dye

ebd

I believe padauk is considered a dye wood for bright red or orange. The wood darkens. I would imagine dyed cloth would also.

Re: OT- Moss/Lichens??

ebd

[quote]it was just recently (within the last couple of years) discovered that lichens are actually three species in most cases there is also a yeast involved as well as the traditionally known fungus plus alga or cyanobacteria symbiosis[/quote]

Thanks. Way back when I studied botany, plant anatomy, and plant physiology they thought it was just fungi and alga. Neat to know that there is more to it - not that I'm doing anything in those fields anymore, LOL.