Apothecium

The word immediately recalls apotheke, the greek word for storehouse (it also means pharmacy in many languages, including the scandinavian ones) but is in fact the name given to the reproductive organ of lichen. Lichen can reproduce both sexually and asexually, by vegetative reproduct. In the latter a part of the lichen literally breaks off and if transported with the wind it will start a new life where it lands. For the sexual reproduction it is the fungal part of the symbiosis that reproduces, forming cup shaped fruiting bodies that will produce the spores (spore-storehouse!). The apothecium on the foliose lichen (leaflike lichen as opposed to crustose lichen, the one that looks like crust on stones, and fruticose lichen, the coral like type) in my blip gives the lichen an alienlike semblance.