Appears in
Oxford Companion to Food

By Alan Davidson

Published 2014

  • About

Lichens occasionally provide human and animal food. Some of these are popularly called ‘moss’, but lichens are different from mosses and only the former are edible.

Lichens are biological curiosities. What appears to be a single plant is two, a fungus and a green or blue green alga. The two plants co-operate with each other to cover bare rocks, often in hostile (for example Arctic) regions where nothing else can grow. The alga can use photosynthesis to gain food from the air with the energy of sunlight, something no fungus can do.