Military presence on Pembrokeshire coast

Not for the first time!
In 1797  a French invading force that landed a few miles away  was repelled by a hastily-mustered squad of local militia and, apocryphally, a troop of warlike matrons. However the 'British Soldiers', so-called, illustrated here,  is a lichen comprised of tiny pinhead blobs of lipstick-red fungal material supported by algal 'stems', the two combined in a symbiotic union which may be mutually beneficial or may represent some sort of controlled parasitism. Lichen is a peculiar organism and the inter-relationship between its two constituents is mysterious.

The fungus element of the lichen (Cladonia cristatella) is named for the scarlet uniforms of the British soldiers (Redcoats) who attempted to quell the American Revolutionary War, aka the War of Independence, in the late 18th century. It was an American soldier, Colonel William Tate, who, fresh from the triumph over the English in his native land, instigated an attempt by a small fleet of French ships to land an expeditionary force on the British (or Irish) coast in the hope of rousing revolutionary fervour,  akin to that in France, among the populace. The enterprise quickly petered out when the local military arrived and Jemima Nicholas, the town cobbler, marched her band of red-shawled ladies around the hill. Or so we like to tell the tourists. The evidence she existed at all is very tenuous.

I was thrilled to spot this curious lichen among the coastal heather  yesterday and today I borrowed my son's macro lens to get a closer shot of it. You can read more about British soldiers lichen here and about the French invasion of Pembrokeshire in 1797 here.