05-04-2025
Scrambled eggs are back on the menu for Norfolk Wildlife Trust
The gluing of rare 'scrambled egg' lichen to the ground is my kind of conservation, says Norfolk Wildlife Trust reserves officer Robert Morgan
Lichen is a topic that's not usually covered in the news. So, for those unversed in the subject, lichen are those weird crusty growths on churchyard headstones, old trees, roof tiles or, in the case of mine, the bodywork of a dilapidated car.
Lichens have fascinating biology and are important indicators of environmental health, particularly airborne pollution, so much so, the vulnerability of some species has driven them to national extinction.
Scrambled egg lichen, Fulgensia fulgens (Image: However, a recent collaborative project has seen the introduction of one of these 'lost' species to Norfolk.
To find out more (as BBC 'Countryfile' presenters say) I travelled to Norfolk Wildlife Trust's Weeting Heath to meet the reserve's warden, James Symonds.
After following James across the Hockwold Road, and then a vault over a low stile, I found myself in a large field of close-cropped vegetation, sandy soil, and in places, bare stony ground.
Most people driving past wouldn't pay it much attention – just an ordinary field.
But it's far from that!
Jon Cripps CWT collecting scambled egg lichen (Image: Plantlife) This patch of impoverished looking terrain stands as a relic of a unique and strange landscape.
But it's a postage stamp compared to the vast steppe-like wilderness that was once the Norfolk and Suffolk Brecklands.
Originally covering 370 square miles, the Brecklands, up until the turn of the 20th century, was characterised by huge tracts of open ground.
The word 'breck' was used to describe the 'broken' land of heath, scattered scrub and sparse grassland.
The light sandy soil would often result in sandstorms, with even dune systems forming.
Some species of lichen will grow in odd places, even on old cars (Image: The Brecklands were cleared of trees as far back as Neolithic times and were continually farmed until the soil was exhausted.
Rabbit warrening and sheep farming became the only viable agriculture, and this developed and maintained the landscape over the following centuries.
It supported a range of unusual wildlife too, with some species thriving in this Mediterranean-style habitat, but nowhere else in the UK.
The last hundred years has seen the Brecks all but disappear under intensive forestry, with the rest giving way to modern fertilized and irrigated agriculture.
NWT owns and manages some of the remnants of this landscape, and James works hard at Weeting Heath to maintain his patch.
He explained that 'mild winters, wetter summers and the human-induced increase in atmospheric nitrogen means grass grows quicker and thicker, and this crowds-out specialised habitat specific species, particularly some of the Breck lichens that need bare or thinly vegetated ground'.
The collapse of the Breckland rabbit population, due to disease, has exacerbated the problem further.
To address this, James rotavates the topsoil on selected plots, this is supported by grazing ponies and sheep to keep the vegetation short over the remaining areas.
Many rare plant and invertebrate species benefit, and most notable to birdwatchers, the stone curlew does very well here.
James led me to a piece of undulating ground that comprised of a sequence of ridges and furrows.
It looked like a huge square of corrugated sheeting buried just beneath the sandy soil.
Known as the 'washboard' it was created nearly twenty years ago as a refuge for several rare lichen species.
Since the 1970s three species of Breckland lichen have become locally extinct, with two of these disappearing from the UK entirely.
The Scaly Brecks Lichen continues to be recorded across southern Europe, but the Starry Brecks Lichen is now eye-wateringly rare, with it being known from only a handful of sites in Norway.
The Scrambled Egg Lichen, also lost from the Brecks, is still found in reasonable numbers, on a coastal dune system in Cornwall.
For this reason, the species was selected as the best candidate for a translocation project to Weeting Heath's 'washboard'.
In recent times many species have been given catchy monikers – an attempt to make them more familiar, rather than carrying the obscurity of a long unpronounceable scientific name.
Unsurprisingly, this lichen, as its common name suggests, is creamy-yellow in colour and crumbly in appearance.
Led by the conservation organisation Plantlife, with funding from Natural England, the project forms part of a wider scheme to increase the biodiversity of the Brecks.
James travelled to Cornwall and met with Plantlife's senior lichen specialist Dave Lamacraft, and Jon Cripps from Cornwall Wildlife Trust, the Ranger for the donor site, Penhale Dunes.
The team carefully removed small patches of the lichen – about the size of a 20p piece.
Once back at Weeting, 160 were transplanted onto the washboard.
Taking advice from previous successful transplants, half the lichens were stuck down with book binding glue!
The rest were set in wet soil.
Walking with our heads down and eyes firmly on the ground, James showed me the marked ranks of his new wards.
He explained that 'although the scrambled egg lichen is a striking species and nice to have back, it is an important part of the biological soil crust community and helps stabilize a fragile ecosystem'.
James smiled and continued: 'in addition we unintentionally brought along a globally rare tiny parasitic fungus that the lichen hosts, so we effectively got two rarities for the price of one.'
Lichen growing on an old gravestone (Image:
Despite having over 1,800 species in the UK, lichen, not surprisingly, are often overlooked.
It's probably true to say that even some natural historians give them little regard, me included.
But James's enthusiasm has sparked a new interest, it was a real joy and inspiration to talk to such a knowledgeable and dedicated naturalist.
But they are fascinating, in fact lichen are not a single organism, but a stable symbiotic association (a mutually beneficial relationship) between a fungus and algae, or sometimes cyanobacteria; occasionally it can be both.
Although James considers it less symbiotic and more slavery, 'the algae is trapped in the fungus cells for the purpose of photosynthesis, and to provide the fungus with sugars, but with, it seems, nothing in return'.
Lichen were one of the first multi-cellular lifeforms on dry land, and their ability to absorb nutrients from the air, break down rock and entrap the earliest forms of cyanobacteria, led to the formation of the first soil on earth.
This allowed the evolution of complex terrestrial plants and, eventually, us too. It seems to me, we owe them!
