So: Are these people one organism or two? Most of the lichens I find are Xanthoria tenax. Oh, they are both, until it comes to the taxonomy. A lichen’s body is called a thallus—as in, a thallus is to lichen as a body is to humans. It’s not that there aren’t lichens there—I’ve seen crusty ones. (Its common name is dotted ramalina.) She hands me the lichen, which feels strangely plasticine. Across geographies and epochs, most lichens like to grow on stable surfaces they can adhere to—wood, rocks, cement. Some lichens have a second cortex below the medulla; others simply attach directly to the substrate, where the lichen lives. It’s probably a Ramalina, with flat strands branching from its base. For instance, not all the nutrients I absorb are due to my own digestion. Studies have also revealed that once a lichen is broken into its constituent parts in the lab, they can’t be reunited. It’s an important food for deer; it also serves as material for birds’ nests. Though lichens appear varied, they mostly adhere to the same basic structure. 1999. Sometimes called a photobiont, the alga or cyanobacterium makes food for the fungus, manufacturing sugars from sunlight and carbon dioxide. Anyway, she found some lace lichen growing in Morgan Territory Regional Park. As of January 2016, California will be the first state with an official state lichen. And it’s known for handling pollution well. The shrubby lichens, these beardy-looking tangles, are structurally more complex from an architectural perspective and are therefore likely latecomers, evolutionarily speaking. Lace lichen, Ramalina menziesii, is easily recognized. (If you have ever known a person who has different-colored eyes that aren’t the result of an injury, they have genetic material from an entirely separate human.) Perhaps fishnet-stocking lichen would be a little too racy a nickname. But how do you tell when the lichen is Diplochistes and when it’s Cladonia? Most of us don’t notice they’re doing anything until we take a round of antibiotics. They’re also known for creating soil: They’re the first colonizers of bare rock and cause the rocks to weather more quickly. In the middle of its structure. In July, Governor Jerry Brown signed into law a bill declaring the lace lichen—found along the Pacific coast and throughout the coast ranges—the state lichen. ), which is also pale green and dangly. Today here in Tilden, we have a hand lens, laminated papers, and a small guidebook from the California Lichen Society, and we’re going to do our best. This is the lichen world’s version of Theseus’s paradox: Is an object that has had every part removed and replaced—as happened with the rotting boards of Theseus’s ship, per Plutarch—the same object? It is pale green and dangles in strips from trees. Though nitrogen is a fertilizer, it’s also a pollutant, and some species love it, others not so much. Stephen Sharnoff Shares the Secrets of the Lichen World, Flying Lichens, Like Old Man’s Beard, Find a Way to Live on Air. Most of the cells in your body—save some nerve cells—turn over in the course of your lifetime. But that’s about it. So our identifications are somewhat inexact. Share your love of Bay Area nature with a Bay Nature gift subscription and save over 30%! reside. Deliniating southern California from all of California refines the species which are so unique and allows for better understanding of the lichens here. Counties include from San Luis Obispo, Bakersfield and San Bernadino counties and all counties south of these to the border of Mexico, Nevada and Arizona. Then I remember how they dry and crumble and I run some tap water over it, holding it in the palm of my hand. Some mycobionts—that’s the fungus part of the lichen—are just badly behaved. Take Diploschistes muscorum, for instance: It’s a parasitic lichen, and it starts its development on a Cladonia lichen, gradually replacing Cladonia filaments by growing over them and sucking energy from their algal partner, Trebouxia irregularis. It’s possible that bacteria are essential to lichens’ existence, making lichens more like an ecosystem than just a two-party party. The original list was published in the Bulletin. Sign up today: Sponsored by East Bay Regional Park District. Evans and I will see all three in the Tilden Nature Area. A 2008 USDA report specifically flagged the Bay Area for having “small hot spots of poor air quality,” based on its lichens. Its outer surface is the cortex, where filaments of the fungus are packed densely to keep other organisms and the elements out. But there’s a whole separate genetic entity in there, just as Diploschistes is residing in Cladonia—though, obviously, the absorbed fetal twin doesn’t eventually take over every cell. That’s difficult,” she says. I do not mean to denigrate the lichen’s status as a weird compound organism; it’s just that everything is a habitat—Tilden, your neighborhood, your stomach, your own face. She tucks away her lace lichen and we head out into the Tilden Nature Area to find some more. There’s the easy way to reproduce: dry lichen. Bulletin of the California Lichen Society 6: 21-27. When is the exact moment of change? Even here, we see granular, powdery-looking black packets—some kind of lichen, maybe—growing on the wooden footbridge. It’s sometimes confused with Old Man’s Beard (Usnea sp. At that point, Diploschistes leaves off with the parasitism and behaves like any other lichen. Berkeley, CA 94710 Basically lichens are fungi—that kingdom of non-plant, non-animal organisms—that have learned to tend algal or cyanobacteria cells like a farmer does a crop. In return, the fungus gives the algae a place to live, and in so doing, grows its fungal threads into the bodies of the photobiont, making it easier for the fungus to tap into the nutrients its partner produces. I strongly suspect they also make the best imitation ZZ Top beards for those of us who cannot grow them; they are nicknamed the strap lichens, but I prefer to think of them as the chin-strap lichens. Before I left Tilden, Evans gave me a sample of a lichen we couldn’t quite identify. These bushy lichens grow most quickly, Evans says. Are lichens fungus or alga? “Right!” she says. Take the headache further: Let’s talk people. She fishes it out of my bag and is about to begin seriously gnawing on it—whatever it is—when I rescue it and put it atop my bookshelf, out of her reach. Photo by Chris Wagner, U.S. Forest Service. Lichen can also reproduce sexually, but it’s oddly complicated. …promoting the appreciation, conservation, and study of California lichens, Bibliography for “Significance of Lichen Compounds” by Irene Winston, Ken Kellman’s Handy Index to the Sonoroan Flora, Sponsoring Lichens of Conservation Concern, 26th Annual Meeting of the California Lichen Society.

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