breathes on the old growth beech bark
- Size
- Width: 5–20 cm
- Lifespan
- 20–100 years
- Diet
- Symbiotic partnership. Fungus provides structure. Algae provide food via photosynthesis and nitrogen fixation. Requires clean air and high humidity.
- Habitat
- Old-growth forests on bark of ancient beech and podocarp trees where air is clean, moss hangs thick, and humidity remains high from sea level to montane zone.
- Range
- Found in clean-air areas of South Island beech forests and North Island volcanic plateau. Most common in damp undisturbed forests with high rainfall and clean air. Also found worldwide.
- Endemism
- Native
- Main Threats
- Air pollution is primary threat particularly sulphur dioxide and nitrogen compounds. Also threatened by forest clearance, climate change reducing humidity, and collection.
- Population
- At Risk – Declining. Sensitive to air pollution. Disappeared from much of former range in Europe and North America. Still found in clean-air areas of New Zealand.
- Conservation Status
- Not Threatened
- Human Risk
- harmless
- Handling Note
- foliose lichen, safe to handle
- Conservation Note
- Native lichen; not assessed by NZTCS as lichens are generally outside the scope of current threat classifications.
- Te Ao Māori
- No recorded Māori name distinguishes lung lichen from other lichens. Lichens generally called pūkohu or pukorokoro. Lung-like pattern would have been noticed. Looked like inside of animal. Like breathing passages. No distinct name survives. Used in traditional medicine in other parts of world for lung diseases based on Doctrine of Signatures. Belief plant resembling body part can heal that body part. No record of this use in New Zealand but resemblance noted. Today still grows on old trees of cleanest forests.
Observers trace its ridges. Lobaria pulmonaria looks like lung. Lung lichen has large, leafy, wrinkled body. Pale greenish-grey to brownish-green when dry. Bright green when wet. Lobes broad and rounded. Covered in network of raised, branching ridges and deep, sunken pits. Pattern looks exactly like lung tissue. Bronchial tubes and alveoli. Branching passages of respiratory system. Lichen that breathes forest air.
What makes it special is pattern. One of most distinctive lichens in New Zealand. Surface is landscape of ridges and pits. Miniature map of human lung. Raised ridges called veins. Forming branching network across surface. Pits are depressions between veins. Together create pattern both beautiful and unsettling. Reminder forest breathes. Lichen breathes. Air connects us all.
A cyanolichen. Contains cyanobacteria or blue-green algae in addition to green algae. Cyanobacteria give ability to fix nitrogen from atmosphere. Natural fertiliser adding nitrogen to forest canopy.
Three-way partnership. Fungus, green alga, and cyanobacterium living together. Fungus provides structure and protection. Green alga provides food through photosynthesis. Cyanobacterium provides nitrogen through fixation. Tiny ecosystem on bark of old tree.
Grows only on bark of old trees in clean, undisturbed forests. Sensitive to air pollution particularly sulphur dioxide from coal burning and nitrogen compounds from car exhaust and farm runoff. In polluted air it dies. Canary of forest. Tells us whether air is healthy.
Why is it declining? Air pollution and forest fragmentation. In Europe and North America disappeared from much of former range. In New Zealand still found in clean-air areas but under threat from nitrogen deposition, forest clearance, and climate change. Lichen of old forest. And old forest is shrinking.
To find lung lichen is to find lung-shaped patch on old tree. Large, leafy, wrinkled. Living lung on bark. Trace ridges and pits with finger. Feel pattern. Breathing surface. Lichen of clean air. Looks like lung tissue and breathes forest. No one told it otherwise.