What is "lichenology"

Lichenology \Li`chen*ol"o*gy\ (-j[y^]), n. [Lichen + -logy.] The science which treats of lichens.

n. the scientific study of lichens

Lichenology is the branch of mycology that studies the lichens, symbiotic organisms made up of an intimate symbiotic association of a microscopic alga (or a cyanbacterium) with a filamentous fungus.

Study of lichens draws knowledge from several disciplines: mycology, phycology, microbiology and botany and scholars of lichenology are known as lichenologists.

The taxonomy of lichens was first intensively investigated by the Swedish botanist Erik Acharius (1757–1819), who is therefore sometimes named the "father of lichenology". Acharius was a student of Carl Linnaeus. Some of his more important works on the subject, which marked the beginning of lichenology as a discipline, are:

• Lichenographiae Suecia prodromus (1798)
• Methodus lichenum (1803)
• Lichenographia universalis (1810)
• Synopsis methodica lichenum (1814)

Later lichenologists include the American scientists Vernon Ahmadjian and Edward Tuckerman and the Russian evolutionary biologist Konstantin Merezhkovsky, as well as amateurs such as Louisa Collings.