Lichen - Naturalist engraving - Ernst Haeckel, Kunstformen der Natur

Reproduction engraving of: Lichen

Original title Lichenes - Flechten

Cladonia Poster - Thallophytes of the Lichen class (Lichenes)

Illustration from the book Kunstformen der Natur, which is a collection of artistic lithographs of natural sciences published by the German biologist Ernst Haeckel between 1899 and 1904.

This naturalistic illustration is part of an overall style inspired by Ernst Haeckel, which greatly influenced the emerging Art Nouveau movement at the beginning of the ^20th century. This work, illustrating the impressive beauty and great diversity of the biological world, was complemented by a certain amount of scientific information, some excerpts of which are reproduced below.

This information is over 120 years old and some of it may be outdated!

Scientific classification:

 Phylum of fungi (Fungi or Mycetes)
Class of Lichens (Lichenes)

Scientific notice (extract) accompanying the poster print of Lichenes - Lichen :

The diverse group of Lichens (Flechten) constitutes one of the most remarkable classes in the plant kingdom, whose true nature has only recently been fully elucidated. Each lichen is in fact a combination of two very different plant forms, one belonging to the kingdom of true fungi, the other to the kingdom of algae or algarians (aquatic plants). Fungi (Plates 63, 73) are plasmophagous plants that cannot produce plasma, but must absorb it from other organisms. Algae, on the other hand (Plates 15, 65) as well as the unicellular algarians (Plates 24, 34), are plasmodia organisms, like most other plants. They possess the ability to synthesize new living substances or plasma from simple inorganic compounds (water, carbon dioxide, nitric acid, ammonia) by synthesis (or "carbon assimilation"). This community of life, consortium or symbiosis, is of great use to the two organisms living together; the green alga provides the fungus with food and prosperity, and the fungus in return provides it with protection, shelter, and water. Similarly, the relationship between the two symbionts is similar to that which we find in the plasmophagous radiolarians and the "zooxanthellae" or Zooxanthellae, which, as protophytes, inhabit the unicellular body of these protists (see Plate 51, 71). The two different plant forms, the plasmodium (or algarian) alga and the plasmophagous fungus, are so closely interconnected and so dependent on each other in each lichen that the whole body of the lichen appears as a totally unified consortium and takes on a very peculiar form; Both the external form and the internal structure (the regular fusion of green algal cells with the colorless fungal filaments) are unique to lichens and characterize them as a distinct plant class. Phylogenetically, the numerous species of this class have also developed autonomously as a specific consortium. Reproduction occurs mainly by specific seed dusts (soredia); isolated green algal cells (gonidia) or groups of such cells are surrounded by colorless fungal filaments (hyphae) and break off as dust-like "symbiotic buds", which soon develop into new lichens. In addition, lichens reproduce by special (mostly brown) fruiting bodies (sporelia) that produce spores. These sporelia are sometimes disc- or cup-shaped, exposed on the surface (apothecia); sometimes flask-shaped, embedded in the surface of the thallus (perithecia).

Species present on the Lichen - Cladonia naturalist board :

• Cladonia retipora
• Cladonia perfoliata
• Cladonia verticillata
• Cladonia squamosa
• Cladonia fimbriata
• Cladonia cornucopiae
• Sticta pulmonaria
• Parmelia stellarias
• Parmelia olivacea
• Parmelia caperata
• Hagenia crinalis