A place of lichen

Through the post all the way from California came a copy of the journal Fungi - lichen edition, a surprise gift from son Huw. He knows I'm fascinated by the murky margins of the natural world, the lowlife rather than the glamour.

Lichen is not a single organism but two, a fungus and an alga bonded inseparably together, but whether the relationship is one of symbiosis or of slavery no one can tell. In this 'crustose' example, welded indissolubly on to stone, the green areas signal the ability of the algal element to photosynthesize and so supply the fungus with energy. In return the fungus provides a structure for the alga to inhabit. As in most partnerships the exact balance of need is hard to decipher.

Lichen can colonize almost anything, including human skin. I like that one of the articles in the magazine is entitled 
Rapid assessment of the diversity of "vehiculicolous" lichens on a 30 year old Ford Bronco truck in Central Puerto Rico.
(A total of 40 species were identified.)

Blip title comes from a poem of that name by the Australian poet John Kinsella

Grizzled on rocks and trees 
a lukewarm green like a brand 
of house-paint - a fad 
long faded from the market; cladding 
painted over, patios trained, 
brought to order. A paint 
that crackles with the heat,
peels and flakes with cold. Behaves 
adversely in sunlight. A skin disorder, 
a surface feint, epidermal quackery, 
clustering about an area of wear: 
elbow, knee, the code 
lost by its creator.


[Apologies for the italics - I used to be able to fix that in Old Blip but now I can't.]