Terra Affirma: Separate and Inseparable

Connections: In Depth

Terra Affirma: Separate and Inseparable
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Why you can trust us

By Sarah Gilman

< 1 MIN READ

Mar 4, 2024

A multicolor illustration depicts various types of lichen, surrounding text that reads: "They root in stone and drape the bark of trees, fill gaps between tundra tussocks, stabilize wind-scoured sand, and spread across the faces of gravestones and weathered bones. They come in beards, in tendrils, in bubbly and scabby crusts, in frilly, freckled, and hair-edged petals, in branches and brittle antlers, in bouquets of snorkels and tiny goblets."

Hands are illustrated filled with roots and green microbes, alongside text reading: "In parts of the Arctic, they tangle into mats up to 3 feet thick, pillowing your step, peeling en masse off of rocks in domes like improbable hats. We call their species鈥攕ome 20,000 of which have been described so far鈥攖hings like witch鈥檚 hair, bloody comma, surprise, vagabond, beret, firedot, pixie-cup, and lobed nipple. We say that they are star-tipped and black-footed, that they are powdered sunshine, and yellow soot, and pink earth.

They joined hands 250 million years ago, partners spinning into a dance that made them one being. A primary fungus meshed with an alga or cyanobacterium, or both at once. We call this union lichen.

The alga makes sugars from carbon dioxide and sunlight, which it shares with the fungus. The cyanobacterium does this too, and also fixes airborne nitrogen into usable forms鈥攌ey for making proteins. The fungus provides a home, using the sugars to build the lichen鈥檚 body around its participants and storing some in reservoirs as alcohol, which may help it resist long dry periods. The fungus also sponges moisture, nutrients, and minerals from air, dew, fog, and rainfall, and keeps out harmful ultraviolet radiation."

An illustrated rock formation, covered in moss, sits left of text reading: This collaboration allows lichens to grow without soil, in places their constituent parts could never survive alone. Lichens can endure the vacuum of space. They can live in the dry valleys of Antarctica where temperatures drop to negative 58 degrees Fahrenheit, and in deserts that surpass 160 degrees Fahrenheit. Their slow growth marks the passage of time beyond human memory. They draw centuries-old maps over boulders. They fur and blur the edges of still-standing cairns and blinds that caribou hunters stacked from fractured lava flows thousands of years ago in western Alaska."
The bottom half of the image depicts a dark outline of trees and a flying squirrel, with text overlaid reading: "This is just one of the ways that lichens鈥� gifts extend beyond their own skins, into broader webs of connection. In the North, caribou, reindeer, and muskoxen rely on lichen to get them through the harsh, dark blow of winter, and their bodies in turn feed bears, and wolves, and people, helping each live in a place where survival might otherwise be out of reach. In the inland Pacific Northwest, lichens feed flying squirrels during the colder months, and the squirrels stay on through the warmer seasons to feast on mushrooms whose spores, once passed through the squirrels, root a fungal soil network that helps trees draw all that they need from the soil."

An illustrated outline of a moose and human, with lichen filling the outlines. Text surrounding the figures reads: "But one of lichens鈥� strengths also makes them vulnerable. As sponges, they absorb indiscriminately, taking up not only nutrients but also deadly exhaust from our cars and industry, metals from our mining dust, radioactive material from our atomic bomb tests. And climate change is warming the Arctic, allowing shrubs to root in places they never could before, blocking the sun that lichens need in order to make food, slowly whittling them away and threatening all that they sustain.

Their plight is ours. But we would do well to remember that their dance is as well. 鈥淲e鈥檙e all lichens,鈥� as lichenologist Peter Neitlich puts it. From the microorganisms that live on and inside of our bodies and help us digest and fight illness to the animals and plants we depend on for food, shelter, and clean air and water, everything alive thrives only in interdependence. We are separate, yes, but we are also inseparable."

Sarah Gilman is a writer and illustrator covering the environment, natural history, and science. A contributing editor at聽Hakai聽and聽bioGraphic聽magazines, her work has also appeared in聽High Country News, The Atlantic, and more.

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Connections: In Depth

Terra Affirma: Separate and Inseparable

Connections: In Depth

Terra Affirma: Separate and Inseparable

Spring 2024

Connections

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