Study
Die Algentypen der Flechtengonidien
Schwendener, Simon
Schultze, 1869
Microscopic examination of the green cells within lichen tissue, compared against free-living algae, together with observation of how the fungal filaments surround and contact them.
- Studied in
- Fungi, Algae
- Sample size
- microscopic comparison of lichen tissue with free-living algae
The green cells inside a lichen correspond to free-living algal genera, and the lichen body consists of a fungus enclosing algal cells rather than a single organism producing its own green tissue.
What it means
The authors' reading, and ours. Where they differ, that difference is the point.
How the authors put it
A lichen is a composite of two organisms of different kingdoms, not a single plant.
How NatureHQ reads it
Included partly for the history of how it was received. The proposal was rejected for years by leading lichenologists — it violated the assumption that a described species is one organism — and the phrase used against it, that the fungus was a farmer enslaving algae, is the ancestor of a framing this site still has to correct. The observation was right; the metaphor attached to it was not.
- Nineteenth-century microscopy, and the composite nature is now established by far stronger means.
- The two-partner picture it established is itself now known to be incomplete.
What this study is used for on NatureHQ
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