Lichens are the slow ones, the ones that grow millimetres per year, the ones that live for centuries on bare rock. They are the pioneers, the first life on the stone, the ones that turn dead rock into living soil. And there was once a lichen that grew taller than any alive today – a branching, cup-bearing lichen that rose 12 centimetres from the grey stone, forming a miniature forest on the boulder fields. It was the lost alpine lichen grove, and it is gone. Height and form made it special. A 12-centimetre lichen in the alpine zone is a giant – a branching stalk, topped with a pale cup, rising from the rock like a tiny tree. It grew in dense groves, hundreds of individuals covering the boulder fields, creating a miniature forest on the grey stone. It was the rock garden of the high places, the living crust that coloured the mountain. It built the alpine soil. In the harsh alpine environment, soil is precious – a thin layer of organic matter over rock, easily eroded. The lost alpine lichen grove captured wind-blown dust, held moisture from melting snow, and added its own decaying tissue to the ground. It was the engineer of the alpine rock garden, the plant that made it possible for other plants to grow. Its branching cups provided shelter for alpine insects and mites. Its pale colour reflected the harsh sunlight, protecting the delicate tissues underneath. It grew slowly – a few millimetres per year – and a 12-centimetre lichen might be a century old. Lichens reproduce by spores and by fragmentation. The lost alpine lichen grove produced spores in cups at the tips of its branches. The spores were carried by the wind, landing on bare rock, waiting for the right conditions to germinate. That strategy works when the mountain is stable. It fails when the grazers arrive and the climate warms. Introduced grazers and climate warming destroyed it. European settlers introduced goats, chamois, and thar to the mountains. These animals love lichens. They ate the branching cups, trampled the groves, tore up the fragile soil. A slow-growing lichen that takes a century to reach full size cannot survive annual grazing. At the same time, the climate warmed. The alpine zone began to shrink. The lost alpine lichen grove, adapted to extreme cold, could not survive in the milder conditions that crept up the mountain. Its range contracted, then disappeared. By the 1910s, it was gone. The last patches were probably eaten by a goat or withered in a warmer spring. No one knew they were the last. The smaller lichens survived. They are lower-growing, tougher, more adaptable. They are the survivors, the ones that kept their heads down, the lichens of the cracks and crevices. But the lost alpine lichen grove is extinct. A few pressed specimens in a herbarium, a few spores in a core sample, and the memory of a lichen that used to cover the boulder fields, 12 centimetres tall, pale and branching. The rocky ghost has faded. The goats came. The climate warmed. And the groves turned to dust.