A Fungus Among Us

A botanist in Philadelphia is likin' this special honor.

There's a newly discovered species of lichen named for Alfred "Ernie" Schuyler, emeritus curator of botany at the Academy of Natural Sciences and a world expert on rare plants.

Lichen is a type of fungus. The newly named Vezdaea schuyleriana is barely visible and so rare that
it is only known to exist on a single boulder in central Pennsylvania.

That doesn't matter to Schuyler. He says he's honored that his colleague, researcher James Lendemer, named the tiny fungus after him.

Lendemer studied and curated lichens in the Academy's collection. He's now a doctoral student at The New York Botanical Garden and is among the relatively few scientists devoting their research to lichens.