As of: March 7, 2024, 2:30 p.m
By: Ines Alms
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Yellow lichen is spreading in Germany.
Among other things, it sits on fruit trees and worries many garden owners.
What the living things mean.
Everyone has probably seen them before, yellow lichens that sit on the trunks of fruit trees or on rotten branches on the forest floor, but also on walls or roofs.
They are noted and usually mentally checked off, and yet the plants are an important indication of how good the air quality is in their area.
If you discover a tree with a certain species overgrown in this way, you can also assume that the soil there is over-fertilized.
Lichens on trees are a good and bad sign at the same time
The common yellow lichen (Xanthoria parietina) is an indication of over-fertilization of the soil.
© imagebroker/Imago
According to the
Nature Conservation Association of Germany (NABU),
lichens are double organisms that consist of a fungus and an alga and form a community.
Lichens meet their water and nutrient needs through the air.
And so some of the approximately 1,700 lichen species known in Germany react very sensitively to air pollution.
Depending on the species, a spot with lots of lichen is a sign that the air quality has improved.
Beard lichen, for example, does not like pollutants such as sulfur dioxide; people will spend longer searching for the creatures on busy streets in metropolitan areas.
But not every type of lichen is cause for joy: As
Zeit magazine
reports, the common yellow lichen (Xanthoria parietina) has been increasing in Germany since the early 1990s.
“It is an indicator that the ecological balance is out of control,” explains biologist Thassilo Franke to the magazine.
It gets along well with nitrogen compounds such as ammonium, which are mainly found in fertilizers.
A high occurrence of the gases suggests that the soil is over-fertilized or that there are a lot of nitrogen oxides in the air due to combustion processes.
You can find even more exciting garden topics in the regular newsletter from our partner 24garten.de.
“Everything is full of feces”: Lichens are propagated through feces
Fungus expert Norman Glatzer has also found many of the yellow lichens, “feces”, and is sharing his discovery with the community on the TikTok channel
Buschfunkistan
.
This lichen multiplies via the feces of oribatid mites, which contain spores and algae cells from which the lichen can form: a new lichen is essentially born.
The video offers users a lot to discuss:
“Now I’ve learned something botanical – and a new swear word 😅”
“There is very little beard lichen in Germany.
Here in Sweden it can even grow in city parks.”
“I love that lichen is made up of algae, fungi and bacteria and they just rock together.
🥰”
“If you have that on an apple tree, is that bad too?
Can you scrape it off?”
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In response to the frequent question about how harmful lichens are to your own tree in the garden,
Buschfunkistan
gives the all-clear: The lichen does nothing to the tree.
In fact, the lichens that often grow on fruit trees protect the bark from heat, cold and dryness as well as from cracks and wounds.