Vegetation Pioneers

2024 Author: Gavin MacAdam | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 13:38

Where no other plant can survive, the pioneers of vegetation - lichens - settle. But ecologically littered city parks are not to their liking, and therefore they are slowly but surely leaving the industrial cities that were once built among pristine nature. If you don't find a single lichen plantation in your city, it's time to think about your own existence in such conditions

Manna from heaven

"Heavenly manna", which saved the Jewish people from hunger, wandering for four decades in the deserts of Egypt in search of the "promised land", was nothing more than a lichen.

According to indefatigable researchers, the edible coating on the sand, which the pilgrims collected every morning to cook porridge or bake cakes from it, were lumps of lichen called “

Aspicilia edible ».

The vegetative body of this type of lichen, scientifically called "thallus", is an irregularly rounded lumps of ash-gray or brown color, which do not need earth for nutrition. They are carried by a crazy wind across the steppes and deserts, so that unpretentious wanderers and animals who manage to live in such an area have something to eat.

Plant or mushroom

The fabulous endurance of lichens has always amazed the inquisitive heads of Mankind. Lichens were the first to appear on barren bare ground, where other plants simply would not have anything to cling to.

Arkhi lichens grow slowly, but at the same time stubbornly inhabit the lifeless lands, preparing them for more complex forms of life. They are helped in this"

lichen substances », Which contain acids capable of destroying solid rocks.

Only in the second half of the nineteenth century did scientists manage to closely examine the lichen, discovering in it two (sometimes three) independent lives. The lichen turned out to be a symbiosis of a fungus and algae, which led a life together, not trying to find out "who is in charge of the family." Maybe this made them so tenacious and hardy. If people learned the rules of life from plants, perhaps the statistics would not be striking in the number of divorces. After all, no matter how a man and a woman compete, the Almighty created them according to the principle “

symbiosis ».

Lichens do not fit into the classification of living organisms invented by people, and therefore, despite the fact that they partially consist of fungi, lichens are still considered an independent group of plants. We can say that algae, which, as experiments have shown, can continue to live without fungi, was still recognized as "the main thing in symbiosis". But mushrooms without algae lose their vitality.

Healing abilities

If a lichen grows in your garden or in the forest closest to your dacha, then everything is in order with the ecology. It is not for nothing that the plant is called “

Cleanliness indicator". After all, breaking away from the nutrient medium of the soil, the lichen obtains "food" from dew drops, fog moisture, and most importantly - from clean air. That is why the most unpretentious creation of nature leaves the polluted cities.

The fabulous Leshy people clearly copied from

Bearded lichen, giving mystery to the taiga thickets. Its scientific name, Sleepy, gave the name to the acid obtained from the plant.

The acid, continuing the lichen tradition, has fabulous powers, helping to better heal wounds on the skin by killing disease-causing bacteria.

But not only Usney is famous for its healing qualities. Decoctions prepared by traditional healers from various lichens are used as an anti-inflammatory agent, as well as maintaining the tone of the human body.

No chemist can do without litmus, which is obtained from lichen.

Lichen is in demand by the perfume industry. The production of fragrant soap, perfume, powder cannot do without it.

Without lichens that grow in the tundra and are food for deer, the northern peoples would not have been able to survive.