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The idea
for this little book came about as follows. On Saturday mornings
over several years I and a few of my colleagues gathered in the
herbarium for coffee. One of us was Jim Corbridge, then the
Chancellor of the University of Colorado at Boulder, and Professor
of Law. I had inherited a large number of classical wooden jigsaw
puzzles (Pastimes) from my aunt, most of them almost a hundred
years old, and there was always one on the table waiting to be
assembled. Jim and Ron Wittmann, a physicist friend at the National
Institute of Standards and Technology, amateur botanist and now
co-author of my revised Colorado Flora, were addicted to the
puzzles, so much so that the work to which Ron and I dedicated our
weekends began to suffer. |
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One day, as
I gradually weaned my friends away from their favorite pastime, Jim
asked: "What is all this about lichens?" I began to explain to him
some rudiments about lichenology, and before I knew it Jim was
converted, delving into all the literature he could get hold of.
Soon we were looking at lichens together, going into the field, and
Jim began to make his own little collection of lichens. It was so
much fun for him that he proposed that we put together a little
identification guide, not one to produce professional
lichenologists, but one that would introduce the common lichens to
rock gardeners, hikers and climbers, requiring a minimum of
technical terminology, and showing how the most common and
conspicuous lichens can be recognized on sight without recourse to
the microscope. The result is this lichen primer. |
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The color
photographs are taken from specimens housed in the University of
Colorado Herbarium. We are greatly indebted to Ken Abbott,
photographer with the University Public Relations Department, for
his excellent capture of the essence of the species and to Ron
Wittmann for help with layout and typography. |
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Looking at
some of the photographs of crust lichens, we suspect that we have
substituted living jigsaw puzzles for the old ones! We hope that
you will enjoy their challenges. |
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W. A. W,
DECEMBER, 1997 |
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