botanyshitposts:

writingbiologi:

alithographica:

botanyshitposts:

i arrive at the gay bar in full butch getup and i look like super hot like trust me and i start buying chocolate milk for the femmes at the bar…..between my striking good looks and my generosity concerning tasteful dairy products i have impressed them greatly and after an hour of chatting I make my move. i reach into my pocket and remove a large, gorgeous lichen affixed to a piece of bark from its protective herbarium packet that I have concealed in my pants pocket. “it’s a symbiotic relationship between a fungus and an algae,” i begin,

You say shitpost but I swear to god I would pick up the U-haul on our way home from the bar don’t try me

A new discovery a few years ago revealed there is also basidiomycete yeasts involved in the lichen symbiosis, a third player going completely undetected for 150 years.

this is true!!!! we still dont know a whole lot about how it interacts, though. it fucks me up because you would think that the exact correct combination of microscopic algae and fungus coming together to germinate into a weird psuedo-organism would be nearly impossible, but yet it happens all the time everywhere on earth….and now there has to be a yeast, too?? so you gotta have the correct exact species of microscopic algae, fungus, and yeast coming together on the correct substrate by no one’s control but the wind and rain or else whoops, no lichen???? how does that happen??