The Trouble With Lichen

... is that it's difficult to get into focus!

I'm finishing off a short Open University course on microbiology, so thought I'd celebrate with a shot of one of Nature's weirdest plant/animal/things.

Lichen are composite organisms consisting of a symbiotic association of a fungus (the mycobiont) with a photosynthetic partner (the photobiont or phycobiont), usually either a green alga (commonly Trebouxia) or cyanobacterium (commonly Nostoc).

They also look very, very other-worldly. I imagine that the "red weed" in War of The Worlds was a lichen. Plasticy, wet, crawling...

Trouble With Lichen is also the title of a great book by John Wyndham, one of the UK's best (but largely forgotten) science fiction authors - see also Day of the Triffids, The Kraken Wakes, The Midwich Cuckoos, Chocky, The Chrysalids etc.