Day 33: Lichens!

I have always been fond of lichens.  I recall, far back in my childhood, encountering British soldiers lichens (Cladonia cristatella) growing atop a neighbor’s fencepost, in an enticing micro-forest of gray-green stalks and brilliant red caps.  Lichens are odd among living organisms, for being two in one:  an alga and a fungus joined together.  Scientists still don’t know who gets the upper hand in the partnership:  are lichens simply fungi that have taken up farming, or are they algae in fungal space-suits (allowing them to live in brutally hot, dry, and cold conditions where algae alone could not survive).  Lichens are odd, and lichenologists can be a rather odd bunch, too — I count a few among my friends.  On a gray and foggy winter morning, as I walked down Piney Woods Church Road from Rico Road, it was wonderful to be greeted by a splash of red on a fallen fencepost.  Closer inspection revealed a community of lichens.  This photograph includes two members of the genus Cladonia:  Cladonia didyma, (Southern soldiers, the one with the red caps) and Cladonia subtenuis (Dixie reindeer lichen, the one that looks like a shrub with bare branches).