Is there a Method for Lichen on Moss

[Shogun610]

Hello,

So my method for growing growing moss is pretty good I think. What I like to do is collect sidewalk moss , dry it out and use ground up sphagnum as a substrate for the spores to grow onto since regular soil surface is too dry atleast my soil mix is (akadama and pumice rations depending on type). Such as this which then grows on great
But what I want to get to is higher level of a moss interaction. And I’m able to grow moss and sedums pretty well to make things interesting. Such as this its different than moss but is a good ready made companion essentially.
what I want to get to though may have to be through more time and less disturbance of moss in fall? I usually remove due to dormancy and making sure I don’t water log the trees .. but has anyone here successfully been able to grow lichen?
I want to incorporate lichen in moss / sedum such as onto a forest like this.

If anyone has been able to propagate lichen ,, how did you do it , how long and what are best conditions to get lichen to grow on the soil surface

 

[Colorado]

I’ve got some lichen on the surface of the soil on a few of my trees.



I just collected it from the forest and placed it on the surface in with the moss. I placed it about a year ago and the lichen seems to be doing well. I don’t remove the moss for winter, I just leave it all year round.

 

[Shogun610]

I’ve got some lichen on the surface of the soil on a few of my trees.

View attachment 544110View attachment 544111

I just collected it from the forest and placed it on the surface in with the moss. I placed it about a year ago and the lichen seems to be doing well. I don’t remove the moss for winter, I just leave it all year round.

Ok but did you collect the lichen and the moss like that and it just grew ??
I’ll be in the forest and mountains this weekend so I’m definitely going to collect

 

[Wires_Guy_wires]

Lichen can be ground and grown out to proper size.
Meaning you can blend them, and then mix them in some sort of starch paste and paint them onto things.

However, since lichen are a combined organism (fungus + algae, at least) and they're very, very susceptible to right or wrong environments, it's hard to grow them outside of a glass dome.
Some of them survive by growing in places where nothing else grows, so there's no competition for decades. Or they have colonized a tree before it fell over, and then when conditions were right, they grew up to something larger. Thumbnail sized lichen can be 40+ years old sometimes, and they only grow well when there's some rain and within a certain temperature range.
I think it's good to keep that into account. Yes, there are lichen that colonize mossy areas and forest floors, like those pixie cup lichens, and most of them originate from a branch or bark somewhere on a tree. But in those spots on the floor, they are often not long lived. A single season, maybe three years if the moss doesn't crowd them out. The issue with our plants is that we water them, often, so moss doesn't always die back and the soil can be too damp for the lichen to stay upright.

Consider looking for lichen that grow on wood or rocks, this way you can just jam a few lichen covered branches or rocks into your moss and still have the looks but less of the hassle of trying to regulate their growth.

 

[Shogun610]

Hmm okay thanks for the input both so far .. as you can see this is getting into a mode of more and more detail and god I hate the term but “nuance” blahhh lol

 

[MaciekA]

I have successfully propagated lichen in a similar manner to how @Wires_Guy_wires describes, collecting as much of it as I can find, grinding/chopping it up, then spreading it over an area or rubbing it against objects I want the lichen to grow on. I've found that on tree bark where I want to try to grow lichen, I have good results by rubbing the lichen against the bark. The lichen I use is mostly stuff landing in my garden from nearby bigleaf maple / thuja / cottonwood / alder, so it might be tree friendly. Some of the trees I have from the mountains or from Telperion had significant lichen either on the topsoil/moss and/or bark, and that population has remained sustainable for years and seems to spread via spores.

Lichen takes some time to appear in my experience. Long enough that by the time it appears, I've forgotten when I applied the treatment.

I haven't yet tried propagating any of the lichen that live on stone, sidewalks, sewer infra, etc and in my neighborhood there are many of those. Would be really cool to get lichen to densely cover a whole rock.

 

[Colorado]

Ok but did you collect the lichen and the moss like that and it just grew ??
I’ll be in the forest and mountains this weekend so I’m definitely going to collect

Can’t really remember to be honest but I think the lichen was growing separate from the moss when I collected it.

 

[Shogun610]

Found some!