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Fishnet Lichen - Ramalina menziezii

The lace was impressive, with hundreds, maybe thousands, of strands crisscrossed at eye level. Lichens are notorious for being slow-growing, but this Ramalina menziesii was a superb specimen, and I wondered about its age. These are complex colonies. A fungus provides the structure, and a green alga lives between the fungus fibers, providing the pair with sugars manufactured from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. It looks like one organism, but this might have millions of cells, each an individual life form.

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Fishnet Lichen - Ramalina menziezii-Rosario Head-Deception Pass State Park--4.jpg
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@ Thomas Bancroft
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2500x1660 / 1.7MB
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Bryophytes
The lace was impressive, with hundreds, maybe thousands, of strands crisscrossed at eye level. Lichens are notorious for being slow-growing, but this Ramalina menziesii was a superb specimen, and I wondered about its age. These are complex colonies. A fungus provides the structure, and a green alga lives between the fungus fibers, providing the pair with sugars manufactured from sunlight, carbon dioxide, and water. It looks like one organism, but this might have millions of cells, each an individual life form.