Okay, I have a confession. I just came back from dinner and a walk afterwards. During the walk I collected a bunch of lichen (shown in the attached photo) found on the ground under some trees in the square of my university campus for a person experiment. The little experiment that I have in mind is just taking a closer look at the lichens under a bright lamp or lighting that I have in my dorm room. I do plan on returning the lichen specimens back to the area tomorrow. I have a special interest into lichens recently and wondering how long they last for in a plastic container, closed but I may open it later for the night until I get to return them. YFI, no I did not got permission to collect these specimens since it was a just a spare of the moment idea lol. What are your thoughts on this? Have you ever done any unethical or illegal collecting before also? Ops…
Update time: Just finished my experiment which I decided to switched from my camera to my phone macro lens. All pictures taken and posted on my INaturalist account. Afterwards, I decided to just return them tonight so I did that because the square isn’t that far away from my dorm building and the path and square was pretty lighted up so it was safe. I cleaned my containers and now rest time. Silly silly me! I’m going to bring my light to my walks instead for lighting uses. I should’ve posted this thread in my journal but I still want to hear your thoughts and opinions about this situation and situations like this you have been in if you want to share.
There is another thread about an involuntary hitchhiker on lichen that was moved across country. A moth.
It is a tree-dwelling lichen and you found it on the ground. It isn’t going to get back on to its tree so I don’t see a problem with taking the specimen.
You don’t need permission to collect that.
There’s nothing unethical (nor illegal) about this. Just be careful not to move the lichen to a different city or state. It could accidentally spread other species
In many parks or nature preserves you actually would need permission to take anything at all out of the park, but in the square of a university I doubt removing lichen that had already fallen from the tree is a problem
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