What conspicuous life form do you surely see almost every day and almost everywhere, and yet, predictably, overlook or outright dismiss it as insignificant? If you recall that catchy little jingle from Nature Study that goes, “Freddy Fungus and Alice Alga took a lichen to each other (and got married)”, you have your answer: the lowly LICHEN.  You can appreciate lichens on many levels. They are beautiful with colors ranging from vibrant yellow, orange and red to the most delicate pastels. They have interesting growth patterns, from simple crusts on tree bark and rock (crustose lichens) to elaborate leafy (foliose lichens) and branched , brushy (fruticose lichens) forms. But, if “Freddy and Alice” are all that you know about lichen biology, then you’re missing out on one of the most amazing stories in all of Natural History.  British Soldiers Lichen (Cladonia cristatella; fruticose) Lichens are the quintessential synthetic/SYMBIOTIC forms of life on Earth. In fact the very notion of what symbiosis is derives directly from the lichen condition. Tiny or big (up to several meters!), a lichen is formed mostly by one individual from about 20K species of specialized “sac fungi” (Ascomycota), constituting most of its bulk and called the