Twelve Readings on the Lichen Thallus

I. Face in the Mirror		VII. Species
II. Nameless Little Things		VIII. Theoretical
III. Credo		IX. Paralichens
IV. Re-emergence		X. Homeostasis
V. Conversational		XI. Preassembly
VI. Reassembly
(download all eleven here – 5.2 Mb zip file)

Twelve Readings on the Lichen Thallus is a series of personal essays written by Trevor Goward and now appearing at three-month intervals in Evansia, the journal of the American Bryological and Lichenological Society. These essays come at the end of a long silent period of introspection and observation. Working on his own in the lichenological paradise of intermontane British Columbia, Trevor taught himself to think of lichens not in terms of their parts, from the inside out, but instead holistically, as organisms, seen from the outside in. In the end he came to see lichens as occupying a remarkable ontological space. “Lichens”, he says, “exist at a doorway, a portal. Look out this doorway in one direction and what you see is ecosystem – a collective of unrelated species, fungus and alga and bacteria. But look out the same doorway in the other direction, and what you see now is organism, in a sense no different from any other macroscopic organism.”

Through the vehicle of these essays, Trevor hopes to encourage the lichenological community to step outside of itself for a moment and look back in at lichens and at our own perspectives on them. Lichens, he insists, have relevance far beyond their inherent interest as objects of scientific inquiry. Seen at sufficient distance, as metaphor, they become a central pillar in the new scientific, philosophic and artistic world view now emerging across an array of disciplines.

Nine of Trevor’s essays have been published to date, and are posted here, often with corrections to the original published versions, which will likewise soon appear on line.

Jason Hollinger, Webmaster