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Site Research

“You know, I was talking with my friend Kerry Knudsen and he was grousing about a question he often gets—"What good are lichens?” I am beginning to understand my fascination—it is for a terra incognita, a place just beyond what is known. It is there in a lichen specimen underneath my microscope. It is there in the vista of the Cascades beyond my telescope. I must reduce, taxonomize, call out markers or I must gape in awe. I can examine. I can gaze. I see everything and nothing.

Kerry had a straightforward answer to the question: “Just like every human being, lichens basically are valueless. Their value is that they are alive. That they are in themselves. They have no use except their own beauty and life.”  -Eli Maroscher

Lichen Study