Join Nature Columnist Sue Pike for a talk about the biology and basics of identifying common lichens. Lichens are a complex and beautiful life form that grow almost everywhere but are often overlooked and misunderstood. Not a plant and not a fungus, they are composed of, at the minimum, two completely separate organisms-a fungus and an algae. They grow in your backyard, in the woods, in the fields. You'll also find them in some of Earth’s most extreme places: mountaintops, sea-splashed cliffs, and gravestones. If you do any hiking in the White Mountains, you’ll find lichens well above treeline growing on the stunted trees that are continually blasted by winter winds, frozen into eerie shapes, coated with rime ice, subjected to temperatures well below zero degrees. You’ll also find them along the coast, clinging to salt spray-soaked pine trees, bearding cedars and other evergreens in bogs and swamps. They have even survived space! How do they do this? What exactly are they? Are they easy to identify? Come find out.

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