Lovely lichens

I'm going to post with an update about my allotment over the weekend (I finally made it back there today after 3 weeks) but I just wanted to put a second post about another Scotland walk
This time to the RSPB Insh Marshes, and I've become fascinated by the lichens that live on many of the silver birch trees. In some cases completely covering the tree so that they look ghost like. There were not many other wild flowers to photograph but I hope you'll agree these look amazing.

Some seemed to completely cover the branches.

You can see in many cases that there are different types of lichen on the same branch.

According to the British lichen website, Lichens are a dual organism, two life forms living together symbiotically, the main partner is the fungus and the other partner is usually a green algae. Most of the ones that I was seeing were fructicose shrubby lichens! Lichens absorb water and minerals, over their entire surface area, from rainwater and directly from the atmosphere. This makes them extremely sensitive to atmospheric pollution. So are good indicators of levels of pollution. We were breathing good clean air in Scotland.