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seething about the fact that i will never experience photosynthesis in my own useless cells. i bet it feels so good when the light of the sun both warms you and fuels you at the same time. a bone-deep satisfaction mixed with a heated sugar-rush and endless brightness. not that i would fucking know

lichenaday

Usnea quasirigida

I've got sunshine . . . on a cloudy day. When it's cold outside, I've got Usnea quasirigid-day! OK it doesn't exactly work, but close enough for me! This adorable fruticose lichen has a pendant to bushy, dark- to bright-green thallus of thin branches covered in lateral fibrils. The ends of the branches are capped with rounded apothecia surrounded in a radiating margin of fibrils. U. quasirigida grows on coniferous trees in submontane regions, and while it has largely been accepted as a distinct species in NW North America, it is synonymized with U. intermedia in Europe, which obscures its range and habitat preferences somewhat. It's never easy with these guys, I'll tell ya. That doesn't change the fact that he is a sunshiney little pal and I enjoy seeing him.

images: source

info: source | source | source

lichenaday

What is a "semilichen"?

Me: *sighs* this is some Jan Vondrák nonsense, isn't it? *Googles* yep, called it.

Ok ok, It's not really nonsense, it's just that Jan has a tendency to publish papers that make my life more complicated as a lichenologist than it already is. He loves breaking the field and introducing new concepts and terms and questions to be asked. He's a really cool, really smart, really nice guy who knows his shit, but he's become a bit of an inside joke in our lab group, to the point that when stuff gets complicated we yell "JAAAAN!!!" in the style of "KAHHHHN!" from Star Trek.

Anyhow, a semilichen (or an alcobiosis as it is sometimes called), is a community of fungi and photosynthesizing organisms like green algae or cyanobacteria that grow together and seem to have some sort of symbiotic association, but are not as like, close? or closed? as a true lichen symbiosis. It is something that falls juuuust short of being a lichen by being less structured and less like, obvious. Usually, it looks like a sort of undifferentiated slime. So where is the line between semilichen and lichen? A lichen has a thallus--a "body" which has specialized structures made up of more-or-less organized fungal hyphae and photobiont cells. Semilichens are more of a general mixture of fungi and photobiont cells without structure or organization. A lichen is a casserole, and a semilichen is a soup. It's not a perfect metaphor but its all I got.

This is all still new, emerging science mostly being done by a small group of researchers, but it is all very exciting and I hope we can watch the development of this field in real time!

Semilichen, an unjustly neglected symbiotic system between green biofilms and true lichens

Alcobiosis, an algal-fungal association on the threshold of lichenisation

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queerplatonic polycule

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BIG NEWS

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Finding love is a beautiful, beautiful thing. 🌈

Photo credits: Justine Milton, Arrowood Photography, Dan O’Day, Images by Amber Robinson, ORDINE DELLA GIARRETTIERA, The Hearnes Adventure Photography, Jenny Fu Studio

when you're not sure about a selfie, but someone said "you're glowing" so you post it anyways.

Why can't I stop dreaming, thinking, singing, longing for what I've lost.

(soul storm) there's a metronome of raindrops falling on the pane of my rooftop window I'm sprawled beneath wondering why I cannot bring myself to cry as of late I keep repeating to myself "It must be the bliss of just being." don't get me wrong. I'm the happiest I've ever been. But even the splendor of summer is nothing without the downpour of spring.