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Serving Northern St. Louis County, Minnesota

The world of Lilliput

You’ll need to look closely to explore this amazing world at your feet

Marshall Helmberger
Posted 9/3/15

There’s an old story about Annie Algae, who lived in the woods by herself. She was a great cook, but her house was a wreck and she didn’t know what to do. Then one day she met Fred Fungus, who …

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The world of Lilliput

You’ll need to look closely to explore this amazing world at your feet

Posted

There’s an old story about Annie Algae, who lived in the woods by herself. She was a great cook, but her house was a wreck and she didn’t know what to do. Then one day she met Fred Fungus, who was a real handyman and in exchange for enjoying some of Annie’s great cooking, Fred agreed to fix up Annie’s place.

It worked out pretty well. In fact, eventually the two realized they’d developed a “lichen” for each other and they made their convenient relationship a permanent thing.

It’s a fun story, and it’s a pretty good description of how lichens actually came to be. These unusual organisms, which are found just about everywhere in the North Country, are created by the pairing of an algae and a fungus. The algae, which has chlorophyll, produces food for itself and its host fungus. The fungus, for its part, provides the outer shell of the lichen, known as the thallus, providing safe harbor for the algae. Without that protection, the algae would quickly die in dry weather.

In the woods, you’ll find lichens growing all around you. They grow on the trunks of trees, hang from tree branches, and grow on rocks, old logs, or just about any semi-hard surface that sticks around for a while.

And while Annie may be a great cook, I think Fred deserves some recognition for his amazing abilities as well. The structures generated by the fungal partners of many lichens are incredible, although sometimes it means getting down on your hands and knees to appreciate them. Rock outcrops are great locations to get up close and personal with some of the strangest lichens around and you might be surprised at what you find when you take the time to explore this Lilliputian world. With its pixie cups, and British soldiers, reindeer antlers and other strange and colorful varieties, it’s a world that, at times, appears torn from the pages of Dr. Seuss.

One of the most common and bizarre groups of lichens are members of the genus Cladonia, which includes many different “species” of lichen. I use the term species with some trepidation, since each lichen is actually comprised of two separate species acting as one.

The Cladonia lichens are generally classified as “fruticose” lichens, which describes those lichens that form truly three-dimensional structures. Crustose lichens, as you might guess, are the lichens you find growing as, often colorful, crusts on rocks or cliff faces. Foliose lichens are mostly two-dimensional as well and are found most often growing on tree trunks.

Lichens need clean air to survive because they absorb moisture from the air and in places where air pollution is prevalent, most lichens can’t survive. But up here, where the air is clean, lichens thrive. Now just get out there and take a look. You might be amazed at what you find.