Discovering the World in Miniature

1. 33 days from Jan. 6 - Feb. 7, 1953
2. 25 days from Jan. 28 - Feb. 21, 1961
3. 24 days from Nov. 10 - Dec. 3, 1953
4. 23 days from Dec. 19, 2005 - Jan. 10, 2006 (current)
5. 22 days from Dec. 18, 1964 - Jan. 8, 1965

With little reason to go outside, the microscope beckons as a pleasurable way to spend an hour. The lichen above doesn't look like much to the naked eye. I found this small clump on our front porch. It's something Seattlites see growing on trees, in gutters and occasionally on the North side of cars. What could be more mundane than a small clump of lichen?

But under the microscope there is much to observe -- leafy clumps, small stalks, baby moss trying to gain a toehold. A little peruse through Microsoft Encarta only increases the intellectual appeal of my mundane little clump:

• A lichen is really a symbiotic combination of a fungus (the mycobiont) and an alga (the photobiont). In this partnership, the fungus provides water, shelter and mineral nutrients, while the photosynthesizing alga supplies food.
• About 20,000 species of lichen have been identified.
• Lichens grow only a few millimeters per year.
• The oldest known lichen, from Western Greenland, is over 4,500 years old.
• In lichen reproduction, the fungus undergoes sexual reproduction and the alga undergoes asexual reproduction, each independently of its partner.
• Lichen are often the first species to colonize barren rock, providing habitat for successor species like mosses.

How lucky we are to live in an age of instant information. Two hundred years ago, when Alexander Humboldt took note of the highest elevation at which lichen grew on Chimborazo he must have wondered what made these life forms so hardy. What would he have given to know even a tenth of what we can find out now with a few mouse clicks?

For the scientifically minded these are indeed the best of times.