Lichen is a relationship

Lichen looks like one thing until you learn that it is not. A fungus makes the structure. A photosynthetic partner brings in energy. Together they occupy bark, stone, roofs, fences, grave markers, and places where neither would thrive alone.

There is something satisfying about an organism whose identity is plural.

From a distance, lichen is texture. Up close, it becomes geography: branching forests, pale islands, tiny crusts, colors that look borrowed from weather.

It does not hurry. That may be part of why it is easy to miss.

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