Lichen embodies the queer experience

Reflections on the natural history of lichen and the lessons it can teach us about queer relationships

Feb 17, 2023

“Lichens are places where an organism unravels into an ecosystem and where an ecosystem congeals into an organism. They flicker between wholes and collections of parts.” - Merlin Sheldrake

Lichen follows me as often as I follow it.

Wrapped around every branch, resting atop every stone, I started to notice lichen in places I never thought it could exist.

Lichen embodies queer ecology lesson after queer ecology lesson: collaboration, unlikely pairings, and survival under unfavorable conditions.

To understand this organism, you must understand that it cannot exist without creation and decomposition. Fungus and alga (and other species) combine under stressful conditions to survive. They settle on hard granite, on winter branches, on any surface that will host them. They don’t require much: they have no roots.

Lichens are made up of at least one fungus and one alga species. On their own, the fungus can decompose matter and isolate essential minerals and nutrients. Algae can photosynthesize and produce sugars for energy. When both organisms combine, their parts intertwine and overlap, enabling both essential processes to occur in one single being.

Robin Wall Kimmerer, in her book, Braiding Sweetgrass, describes their relationship like this: “Only with severe need did the [fungus] hyphae curl around the alga; only when the alga was stressed did it welcome the advances.” I think of queer love in this way. Following a lifetime of rejection and isolation, finding a queer community can feel like a welcome respite from being othered. In these spaces, queer people learn to thrive and embody their authentic personhood.

Lichen’s existence can ask us to question what we think of when we consider ‘individuals.’ Scientists once saw lichen as one being, but now, we understand their survival to be a complex relationship between two or more distinct organisms. We need others to survive.

We also understand our human bodies as individuals, which cannot be further from the truth. Our bodies depend on micro-biotic and other contextual organisms for survival. Our guts, the bacteria on our skin, our need for hugs and farmers and drivers, all point to a multi-species dependence, much like the lessons lichens bestow.

The traditional study of biological sciences leans heavily on heteronormative understandings of both sexual and social relationships. David Giffitths, in his essay, “Queer Theory for Lichens,” argues that studying lichen allows us to break these understandings because it breaks out of the bounds, making scientific tradition moot.

Queer ecology can be best understood as the complex series of relationships that break the boundaries of heteronormativity. Queerness depends on more queerness for survival: we can’t live or love without other queers. We thank lichens for this lesson.

Tony Spribille, a fungal symbiosis expert from the University of Alberta, speaks about the limitations humans face when studying complex relationships within nature.

“The human binary view has made it difficult to ask questions that aren’t binary. Our strictures about sexuality make it difficult to ask questions about sexuality, and so on. We ask questions from the perspective of our cultural context. And this makes it extremely difficult to ask questions about complex symbioses like lichens because we think of ourselves as autonomous individuals and so find it hard to relate.”
-Toby Spribille, from Entangled Life by Merlin Sheldrake

I invite you to begin breaking down the ways you currently understand relationships in humans and throughout nature. Heteronormativity in nature is the exception, not the rule.

I can’t help but be personally impacted by lichen’s root-less life. Instead of depending on roots, they absorb nutrients from the air. Their mineral composition more closely resembles the atmosphere than its solid habitat. In times of stress, I learn from the lichen’s resourcefulness, resilience, and boundless strength. I cling to the surface; I live.

Thank you for spending part of your day with me. If you enjoyed these words, pass them along to someone else. I also attached my favorite Wikipedia pages this month for your exploration. Have a great weekend!