Dr. Dal Forno, with the Fort Worth Botanic Garden/Botanical Research Institute of Texas, will provide an overview of what lichens are and where they grow, and give some advice on how to get started identifying them. Lichens are complex symbiotic units formed by a main fungal partner, a green algal and/or a cyanobacterial partner, and a diverse community of microorganisms. Lichens represent an important and diverse biological group present in most terrestrial ecosystems, and they are a main nutritional strategy in Fungi. Lichens remain broadly unknown systems and are deserving of further research.

Social time begins at 6:30 p.m. and the formal meeting starts at 7:00 p.m. Information about how to access the meeting can be found here.