Braiding Sweetgrass

to the rock.
The fungal/algal symbiosis so blurs the distinction between
individual and community that it has attracted a great deal of
research attention. Some pairs are so specialized that they cannot
live apart from one another. Nearly twenty thousand species of
fungus are known to occur only as obligate members of a lichen
symbiosis. Others have the capacity to live freely yet choose to join
an alga to become a lichen.
Scientists are interested in how the marriage of alga and fungus
occurs and so they’ve tried to identify the factors that induce two
species to live as one. But when researchers put the two together
in the laboratory and provide them with ideal conditions for both
alga and fungus, they gave each other the cold shoulder and
proceeded to live separate lives, in the same culture dish, like the
most platonic of roommates. The scientists were puzzled and
began to tinker with the habitat, altering one factor and then
another, but still no lichen. It was only when they severely curtailed
the resources, when they created harsh and stressful conditions,
that the two would turn toward each other and begin to cooperate.
Only with severe need did the hyphae curl around the alga; only
when the alga was stressed did it welcome the advances.
When times are easy and there’s plenty to go around, individual
species can go it alone. But when conditions are harsh and life is
tenuous, it takes a team sworn to reciprocity to keep life going
forward. In a world of scarcity, interconnection and mutual aid
become critical for survival. So say the lichens.
Lichens are opportunistic, making efficient use of resources when
they’re available and otherwise happily doing without. Most of the
time when you encounter Umbilicaria it is as crisp and dry as a
dead leaf, but it’s far from deceased. It is only waiting, empowered