While I am walking in the park during spring time or after a big rain storm, I noticed that there are some beautiful and colorful patterns in many of the tree trucks. I love their color and the various patterns. They are just like beautiful abstract arts. I took many photographs and try to identify What they are.

Could these beautiful art patterns be Tree Moss and created naturally? Tree moss technically is Lichens according to the Webster's Revised Unabridged Dictionary. We often improperly called Lichens as rock moss or tree moss.

Biology books and literatures showed that Lichens are a class of cellular, flowerless plants, having no distinction of leaf and stem. They are usually scaly, expanded, frond-like forms, but sometimes erect or pendulous and variously branched. They derive their nourishment from the air, and generate by means of spores. They are not autonomous plants, but that they consist of ascigerous fungi, parasitic on algae. The species are very widely distributed, and form irregular spots or patches adhere to rocks, trees, and various bodies. Their colors are usually greenish and/or yellowish. Schwendener discovered and hypothesized that each lichen is composed of white filaments and green, or greenish, rounded cells, and it is argued that the two are of different nature and one living at the expense of the other.

One interest observation is that, after rain, the tree moss has brilliant yellowish, green, and light blue color especially in the spring. But after a dry spill such as in the summer months, grayish light blue color is the dominated one. The Lichen’s beautiful patterns are most likely created during the wet and dry seasons between the growth and scaly process.

Natural Perspective described that Lichens are among the most fascinating organisms on this planet. Their structure is unique: a symbioses of two organisms, a fungus and an algae, so complete that they behave and look like an entirely new being in many species and patterns. Lichens can be divided into three basic forms: crustose (crust-like). foliose (leaf-like), and fruticoseor (stalked).

I think the lovely patterns that shown on many of the trees are Crustose Lichens. Crustose lichens are flaky or crust-like. They can be found covering rocks, soil, bark, etc. They often formed brilliant colors as those that reveal on the photos.