Lichens are cool.
Seriously. They are a mashup of individuals from two different phyla of life: Plants and Fungi. Imagine a whole body merge with a portabella or an eggplant. There you have it.
Maybe they haven’t have advanced farther than milky blue-green smudges on the tree trunks and rocks in the cleanest of climates, but there they are, durable, ancient symbioses, shouldering up with mosses on the oak stems of my mountain.
The nuthatches love them. In the winter, bugs selection is scant, and there’s something about these that the nuthatches are persistently driven to peck at. I haven’t seen bugs on them, but the nuthatches may be eating tiny ones like Collembola sheltering there. Lichens great indicators of air quality. They tend to grow about 12′ above the ground here. Leaching nutrients from dust and nutrient-rich water as it washes the tree trunks during the rains and thaws. They also encrust rocks; these are different sets of species than the oaks. Leathery outposts, making life where there was none.
Such joining of forces was more conspicuous in the early days of life, when any one living thing was newer, had fewer defenses, and less resilient. Joining forces, merging on either the cellular or extracellular level might have advantages, and since primitive defenses didn’t know better… There you have it, lichens.
There are many lichens on my mountain. Often in lovely round blazes. They are a bit opportunist, but I love seeing a well developed colony anywhere.
Scattered throughout the forest up here are some commanding wolf oaks. These stately trees express their form with certitude in the canopy and the cherry thees and maples bend around them to get their sun. One such tree is on the vacant lot adjacent to mine.
The property owner came by one day when I was building my house. Cussed. Accused me of building without permits and crossing property lines. He was just nutty. I eventually managed to steer the conversation to a more civil place, assuring him that I had the HOA’s approval and had the lot surveyed. We chatted a wee bit of small talk, and his eyes centered in on an absolutely declarative blaze of lichen about 20′ up on this wolf oak. And then – holy smokes- he started screaming at me about painting the trees on his property.
He was inconsolable and carried on with his rage, storming about the property glaring at lichens for a good 5 minutes before stomping off. I think he had forgotten his glasses, and the poor fellow was convinced that I had vandalized his entire stand of oaks, maples and cherries.
At least I knew it was a lichen.
So: there were two hominids. Neighbors. Both university teachers. We two had more in common than most of our species, and yet we couldn’t get along- bickering over lichen, ironically, a quarter of a-billion-year-old extra-phylum communal association that seemed to have managed peace for a very very long time. I didn’t know whether to laugh or feel shame, so I did a bit of both.
But I do love the lichens. They seem to be greening up on the edges today.