Life in the cemetery

It was the annual LNU Recorders' meeting today, so we had a somewhat blustery drive to Whisby Nature Park, just west of Lincoln. On the way we stopped at the village of North Scarle  to do a couple of hours of plant recording. 

This corner of the county is quite interesting as the soils are sandy, very different from the limestone and calcareous clay found over much of the rest of the county. The churchyard was full of sheep's sorrel and an arable field next to the cemetery had hundreds of rosettes of corn marigold, an arable weed of acid soils that has declined enormously and is now considered Vulnerable in the UK.

I did get a little diverted by the lichens on the gravestones, particularly this well developed Physcia caesia, with its bluish soralia towards the centre of the rosette.