The Urban Lichen Toolbox

I presented “The Urban Lichen Toolbox” at the 2026 Northeast Natural History Conference.

During this 20 minute presentation, I discussed five main tools to begin to see and appreciate urban lichens.

The “lichen eye”

The first step to appreciate lichens is to start to notice them in your everyday life. Dr. Klara Scharnagl refers to this as getting the “lichen eye”. You can listen to the full description of the lichen eye in this Joyful Microbe Podcast episode: Introduction to Lichens: Dr. Klara Scharnagl.

Resources

“Urban Lichens : A Field Guide for Northeastern North America” is an excellent book to begin to identify different species of lichens in urban areas. Dr. Jessica Allen discusses this book in the In the Defense of Plants podcast episode: Urban Lichens.

There are also many free resources online to begin to appreciate and identify lichens including the websites Ways of Enlichenment and the Consortium of Lichen Herbaria.

If you prefer to download and print out free guides, there are several available from the New York State Museum. Link to guides

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