THE SECRET WORLD OF LICHENS

A lichenologist shares both his enthusiasm and a more than superficial portion of what he knows about his favorite subject.

Mushrooms may get most of the fungal love, but after poring over high-quality photos of 38 lichens and pausing to absorb McMullin’s densely informative notes on their physical and reproductive structures, distribution, and manifold uses as food, medicine, dyestuffs, and even air pollution monitors, readers will be strongly tempted to divide their affections. A general introduction informs readers that these truly ancient symbiotic organisms, which combine a fungus and either algae or cyanobacteria (or, as the author puts it, “occasionally both!”), can be thousands of years old and grow up to “27 millimeters per year!” The book introduces close-up, in-your-cortex views of specimens with, often enough, memorable names like Fairy Puke Lichen, Blushing Rock Tripe Lichen, or Dead Man’s Fingers. One type, Elegant Sunburst, survived more than a year and a half outside the International Space Station—but readers will have no trouble finding lichens of their own closer to home or, following the author’s basic instructions, identifying and studying them.

Glimpses of a minuscule new world for budding naturalists and a rare gap-filler for library collections, too.