Did you know you could use a common plant in nature to find your way? Nowadays you could just whip out your compass app on your phone to find north. But what if you didn’t have cell service? What if you didn’t have your phone!? 😱 So, we decided to do a little science experiment using nature’s compass – lichen. Lichen is the scaly, sometimes leafy, growth located on trees but I had no idea until this weekend that it could be a ‘north star’ of sorts. Here’s what we did.
One of our favorite things to do when we visit my parent’s house is head to their ranch, ride in the back of Papa’s truck, and fill the deer feeders with corn. It’s not hard to get turned around, especially on foot, but we decided to find some lichen and prove that it can point us north.
What you need: a tree growing lichen, a compass, magnifying glass, water, a straw or eye dropper
How you do it:
- Using a compass, locate the north side of a tree to determine where the lichen is growing
- Carefully take a few samples from the tree
- Observe what happens when you place drops of water on the lichen (particularly the leafy looking kind) using an eye dropper or a straw
What’s the science: Lichen is a plant that consists of fungus and an algae. The fungus cannot create it’s own food using photosynthesis so it absorbs moisture and shares it with the green algae. The algae shares it’s nourishment using photosynthesis with the fungus. The north is where the tree retains the moist moisture because it is where the evaporation is the lowest due to the tree seeing the most sun in the east and west. We found that when we dropped water on the lichen it visibly swelled and moved soaking up the water!
Here are a few photos that we took heading to the back of the ranch.
The moss was beautiful, but we were on the hunt for lichen.
The closer we got to the river, the more evident the lichen was, all the time it was growing on the north part of the tree. Needless to say, we were all amazed as we looked a bit closer for our north seeking plant. We hope you enjoy getting back to nature and looking a bit closer for this amazing plant!
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