is this coincidence or a sign?

Today it’s mostly famous for what it looks like on the inside.

It has an equestrian staircase though it’s so smooth it’s really just a gentle slope more than a staircase. It was build like that so our lazy bum king could ride his horse all the way to the top (king not in photo)

And naturally people have also driven cars up the tower

And held a bike race

For a while it was just sort of abandoned by the authorities and became a sloping marketplace

But today it has been restored and become a tourist spot as well as a popular destination for school trips. And yes, you can still watch the cosmos at the top.

Leptogidium dendriscum

Inland woollybear lichen

Is that a caterpillar? A caccoon? An gummy? No, its a lichen! And a friend. This precious little baby fruticose cyanolichen grows on thin, mossy branches of broad-leaved trees in cool-humid regions of the northern hemisphere. It grows in puffy, densely branching cushions of smooth to nodulose filaments. It is blue-green to gray to brown in color, with a shiny surface and jelly-ish texture when hydrated. It occasionally produces flat to convex, red-brown apothecia on the ends of branches. L. dendriscum has a Scytonema cyanobacterial photobiont that looks like this in microscopic cross section:

Just as cute on the inside as the outside!

images: source | source

あさね…