Six Degrees Of Separation

Day 23: Six degrees of separation: the idea that any two people are but six steps away from one another in the social sphere. Back in the days when my interest in lichens was in an early phase, I discovered a strange mass of tube-like branches, black on the underside, but more notably, bearing several disk-like structures (apothecia) of a rather sickly-looking chartreuse hue. I had discovered my first Hypogymnia. With my curiosity for the genus piqued, I began looking for other species within it, learning to identify them from the way they branched, the colour of their medullary ceiling and other cues. I developed a particular fondness for H. imshaugii (above), partly because it was present in my yard and partly because I was curious about the person after whom it must have been named, so I dug a little deeper and came up with a Wikipedia article about Henry Andrew Imshaug who, it must be confessed, should have been on my radar as a notable lichenologist. However, it was some time later when H. Imshaug the botanist (as opposed to H. imshaugii the lichen) came to the forefront of my attention when I found out that he was part of an expedition to inventory the fungi of Mount Rainier National Park in 1941. During that survey, he and his colleagues discovered a rare fungal species and wrote a paper about it. My botany partners and I learned of Imshaug's paper when we stumbled across the same fungus, although in a different area. Imshaug didn't have access to GPS technology in 1941, so his description of the location where he had found it was vague to say the least, but armed with knowledge of the fungus' preferred host and a rough idea of where Imshaug's group had gone, we were able to locate the site. Standing there among sedge and tinker's-penny, I thought about H. Imshaug the botanist, and how H. imshaugii the lichen had been instrumental in piloting me to the same ground where he and his team had stood. The six degrees of separation had come full circle for Imshaug and me.