We are all Lichen on a Scholtzbos now.
After frequent reminders, my father brought me this dried ‘Karoobossie’ from the farm a few weeks ago. I prefer using dried Scholtzbos in my terrarium as the wood takes longer to decay, and it seems to lend itself to better moss growth than the dead wood I manage to find in these suburban parts. The best wood for mossy growth still remains Milkwood, but these are protected, and it wouldn’t feel fair to pillage the little forest I frequent in Hermanus. According to Karoo Veld: Ecology and management (Esler, Milton & Dean 2006) , Scholtzbos’s proper name is Pteronia pallens also known as "Aasvoëlbos or Witbas". It is indigenous to natural habitat of dry, rocky slopes, found in the Karoo regions of South Africa. The wonderful thing about Scholtzbos is that it’s dried out twisted trunks – (which resemble a kind of Native Bonsai, because they seem to be miniature versions of far larger and older trees) often act as shelter for smaller flora. During the winter, lush lawns of moss may be found underneath these dried, twisted dwarf-trees, even in the most arid regions. When my father gave me this one, his wife told me that it had still been green when they left the farm the previous day, but by now it had dried out. I couldn’t quite understand as the remnants had obviously been without life for quite some time – a few months at the very least. But I thought no more of it and propped it onto my studio shelf for later use. After more pressing tasks had been performed, I broke a small branch from the miniature tree on Sunday ( 3 days past at the time of writing). I placed it into a vacant terrarium along with some surviving moss I gathered from our home in Hermanus and a Rabbit-foot fern and 2 Hypoesthesia cuttings I have been nursing for months now. The increased temperatures in suburban Cape Town makes for tricky conditions as far as terrariums are concerned. The protective environment may quickly turn into an oven if not watched closely. This is the final term, and all mayhem is loose so close watching of fragile biospheres cannot at present be guaranteed. Therefore, I decided to leave the terrariums open for the next few months, and water them every second day. When I checked in on the new habitat yesterday, I was astonished to see living, bright green and orange, flourishing lichen growing on the dried Scholtzbos! Lichen is an organism consisting of algae living in a symbiotic relationship to fungi. Lichens are not parasitic but live on the plant’s surface as a substrate. They are slow growing and long living. The oldest lifeform on earth is the Arctic map lichen, which is dated at 8,600 years. Contrary to popular belief, lichen may flourish in new environments when moved from their location. They have been known to absorb air pollution and the soil crust species is said to be vital in replacing nitrate to depleted soil. Scott Gilbert, Professor of Biology at Swarthmore College, wrote a much-cited paper titled We are all lichens: How symbiosis research has reconstituted a new realm of individuality. In simple terms, what Prof. Gilbert were saying is that the assumption that we as humans are individuals are based in the misconception that our embodied experience along with consciousness, makes of us singular entities. Therefore, in biological terms we are all symbionts, because our bodies consist of a myriad of living organisms. The average human being carries about 100 trillion bacteria in their digestive system alone. Each of those are in every sense of the word alive! Do they possess consciousness? We don’t know. But they are certainly thriving, living, individual organisms colonising your gut. So, if we are all lichens what is our place in the environment? It is by now accepted fact that our biosphere is endangered. To quote Anna Tsing: We are living in precarious times. Perhaps we are like the lichens living on the dried out Scholtzbos – to all appearances dead to the world, clinging for dear life to deadwood, redundant worldviews, ill-informed misconceptions about the world and our place in it. Perhaps a shift in place, a new worldview may prove to be the resurrecting moisture we need to revive what little life we have left. Perhaps, by looking to lichen, we might find new ways of living in a dying world.
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AuthorLaurette de Jager is a Visual Artist working with the Ephemeral Nature of Things, in the hope of finding new ways of existing in a dying Archives
October 2023
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©2022 by Laurette de Jager
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