Rotorua, New Zealand - 1 March 2019; Waiotapu Thermal Area in Rotorua, New Zealand's North Island, is an extended area packed with geothermal vents, boiling mud springs, sulphur fields, steaming fissures and geysers. It has an immense primeval beauty and drama, combined with a feeling of utter manifest chaos - at any moment, you half expect a dinosaur to emerge from the steaming, sulfurous mists. Oh, did I forget to mention? - and it all reeks a bit! And in this respect, this image poses a question. As an environmental scientist, I have always understood that lichen can only grow in clean, unpolluted air. So either my eyes deceive me and this is not lichen growing happily on trees in Rotorua, or that contention is wrong! You can also see a giant fern, so characteristic on New Zealand temperate forests.