Mosses and Lichens 



by the seashore and on the highest mountain peaks. They are 

 the first growths to appear on the rocks and in the places which 

 give no foothold to other plants. When the side of a mountain 

 is torn away by frosts and floods, and the bared rocks, shorn of 

 their forest trees and shrubs, are left unsightly with nothing to 

 tempt other plants to make a home on their ledges, then the 

 lichens come and cover the bared cliffs with delicate traceries and 

 mantles of exquisite grays and greens. They need no soil, a 

 polished rock will meet their need. 



"Meek creatures; the first mercy of the earth, veiling with hushed 

 softness its dustless rocks ; creatures full of pity, covering with strange 

 and tender honour the scarred disgrace of time." Ruskin. 



The foothold of the lichens is often so insecure that one must 

 exclaim as he sees them, " How do you grow in such unfavour- 

 able places? On what do you subsist ? No soil! No water! 

 Dry as tinder! Crumbling at any rude touch!" If the plant 

 could answer, no doubt it would say, "There must be pioneers 

 to open up new territory for higher plants, so from the earliest 

 times nature has employed us to do this work. We travel swift 

 as the wind for we travel with the wind. We are fed by the 

 rains and the dews, the hard rocks soften at our touch and give 

 us food." 



" The chapel and bridge are of stone alike, 

 Blackish-gray and mostly wet ; 

 Cut hemp-stalks steep in the narrow dyke, 

 See here again, how the lichens fret 

 And the roots of the ivy strike." 



Browning By the Fireside. 



It is true that these little plants as they lie upon the rocks, 

 secrete an acid which dissolves the hard minerals. It is true that 

 they have the power to condense moisture from the air, however 

 little it may be, for they must have water as an item of food and 

 as a medium by which mineral-salts dissolved from the rocks may 

 enter the interior of the plant and may pass from cell to cell to 

 those parts where they are to be worked up into plant food. 



The lichens are often the forerunners of rock-loving mosses 

 as without the scanty soil prepared by their chemical action and, 

 without the slight foothold which their debris afford, many 

 mosses would be unable to get a start upon the forbidding rock. 



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