Word.ws English Dictionary

How to use lichen in a sentence

40 example sentences · noun, verb

Lichen means any of many symbiotic organisms, being associations of algae and fungi, often found as white or yellow-to-blue–green patches on rocks, old walls, etc. Example: “A lichen is a fungus with symbiotic algae among its cells.”

Examples of lichen by meaning

nounAny of many symbiotic organisms, being associations of algae and fungi, often found as white or yellow-to-blue–green...

  • The nibble marks of the stone adze were still visible, though crusted over with scale lichens in most places.1915, John Muir, chapter V, in Travels in Alaska

nounSomething which gradually spreads across something else, causing damage.

  • Meanwhile, abiding a day of judgment, she fought ceaselessly to deny the bitter drops in her cup, to tear back the slow, the intangibly slow growth of a hot, corrosive lichen eating into her heart.1912 January, Zane Grey, “Shadows on the Sage-slope”, in Riders of the Purple Sage […], New York, N.Y.; London: Harper & Brothers...

More sentences with lichen

  • A lichen is a fungus with symbiotic algae among its cells.From the entry symbiotic
  • Campylidia are found in several genera of tropical foliicolous lichens.From the entry campylidium
  • In lichens, thallospores are primarily associated with the genus Umbilicaria.From the entry thallospore
  • Poikilohydry occurs in such organisms as lichens and bryophytes, which lack mechanisms such as waterproofing cuticles or stomata that can help resist desiccation.From the entry poikilohydry
  • Xerarch succession if started on bare rock, pioneer species is lichens.2021 July 26, Janardhanan.T, Sanjay Sharma, The Big Book Of Biology For NEET Volume 2, Arihant Publications India limited, →ISBN, page 532. From the entry xerarch
  • Today, one in five of all known fungal species form lichens, or "lichenize".2021, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life: How Fungi Make Our Worlds, Change Our Minds ..., page 86. From the entry lichenize
  • Lichens are 'extremophiles', organisms able to live, from our point of view, in other worlds.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 95. From the entry extremophile
  • Fruticose lichens drape and tuft; crustose and squamulose lichens creep and seep; foliose lichens layer and flake.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 84. From the entry fruticose
  • Holobionts are the lichens of this world, the more-than-the-sums of parts.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 103. From the entry holobiont
  • There are asexual variants among all sorts of creatures, including jellyfish, dandelions, lichens and lizards.2018 April 24, John Launer, “Do We Even Need Men?”, in Literary Hub. From the entry jellyfish
  • Hypogymnia physodes, Parmeliopsis ambigua, and Bryoria fuscescens, but the calicioid lichens (Calicium glaucellum, Chaenotheca chrysocephala, C.2016 January 23, “A Pine Is a Pine and a Spruce Is a Spruce – The Effect of Tree Species and Stand Age on Epiphytic Lichen Communities”…. From the entry calicioid
  • Lichenometry is a dating method which is based upon the direct relationship between lichen diameter and age.2012, Matti Saarnisto, “I.4: Time-scales and dating”, in B. Huntley, T. Webb III, editors, Handbook of vegetation science, Volume 7…. From the entry lichenometry
  • Only a few lichens and mosses colonize the rocky walls of cirques and nunataks.2008, Andrea M. J. Coronato, Fernando Coronato, Elizabeth Mazzoni, Miriam Vásquez, “The Physical Geography of Patagonia and Tierra del…. From the entry cirque
  • Bryorias) one lays the lichen tested upon a piece of white filterpaper on a slide.1995, Volkmar Wirth, translated by Doyle Anderegg, The Lichens, volume 1, Baden-Württemberg, 3.2.5 The Chemistry of Lichens: Determination…. From the entry bryoria
  • Relative rates of apparent CO₂ intake after different periods of submersion of terrestrial and amphibic lichens.1973, Vernon Ahmadjian, Mason Hale, The Lichens, page 326. From the entry amphibic
  • The ground, where there happened to be any, was covered with spongy moss, and mucous lichens.1907, Eclectic Magazine, page 74. From the entry paludinous
  • They found that the same species of mycobiont could lichenize different species of alga , resulting in essentially identical lichens.2023, Lorentz C. Pearson, The Diversity and Evolution of Plants, page 213. From the entry lichenize
  • Lichens' ability to weather makes them a geological force, yet they do more than disolve the physical features of the world.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 85. From the entry weather
  • Like lichens and mycorrhizal relationships, mycoheterotrophy is an evolutionary refrain, and has arisen independently in at least forty-six separate plant lineages.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 173. From the entry mycoheterotrophy
  • For some fungi, lichenisation remains a lifestyle choice; they can live as lichens or not depending on their circumstances.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 97. From the entry lichenisation
  • The research shows the fact that Asterochloris alga was the dominant group in the actively growing lichen podecia.2018, Chornikov, E. S. et al, Samar Journal of Science. From the entry podecium
  • Some lichen species were common in all stand types, e.g.2016 January 23, “A Pine Is a Pine and a Spruce Is a Spruce – The Effect of Tree Species and Stand Age on Epiphytic Lichen Communities”…. From the entry calicioid
  • In testing for color reaction on dark lichens (e.g.1995, Volkmar Wirth, translated by Doyle Anderegg, The Lichens, volume 1, Baden-Württemberg, 3.2.5 The Chemistry of Lichens: Determination…. From the entry bryoria
  • Parmelia omphalodes and P. saxitilis, the “crottles” used traditionally in Britain and Ireland, are sub-alpine lichens in North America.1993, Karen Leigh Casselman, Craft of the Dyer: Colour from Plants and Lichens, Dover Publications, page 270. From the entry crottle
  • The bird had entered a nest covered with lichens, and the nest looked exactly like the lichen-covered tree itself.1983, Bernd Heinrich, In a Patch of Fireweed, page 11. From the entry long-tailed titmouse
  • Schwendener proposed that the lichen fungus (known today as the micobiont) offered physical protection and acquired nutrients for itself and for the algal cells.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 81. From the entry micobiont
  • Our experiments re-confirmed that mosses and lichens functioned better than PCs by decreasing soil buck density, increasing water holding capacity and infiltrability.2015 July 25, “Response of Surface Soil Hydrology to the Micro-Pattern of Bio-Crust in a Dry-Land Loess Environment, China”, in PLOS ONE…. From the entry infiltrability
  • The boat's deck was covered in moss, and its warm, sallow water was filled with lichens that gave off an eerie green glow.2011, Jacob Murphy, Guardians, page 44. From the entry sallow
  • Although many parts of the island are lichenologically unexplored the general distribution of quite a number of more conspicuous lichens can be outlined fairly reliably.1983, R. South, Biogeography and Ecology of the Island of Newfoundland, volume 48, page 322. From the entry lichenologically
  • Two particularly attractive cottages, roofed with mossy and lichened slates, stand at the churchyard's eastern gate, looking up a long avenue of yew trees.1980, AA Book of British Villages, Drive Publications Ltd, page 127. From the entry mossy
  • Cantilevers dripping with flowering creeper, egg-domes mellowed with ochre lichens, glasseries shadowed by time and weather to brood the conspiracy of old conservatories.1961, William Sansom, Blue Skies, Brown Studies, page 206. From the entry glassery
  • Ornamental grasses fringed our path, while through the bracken and lichened rocks projectng overhead little bubbling freshets trickled down at our feet.March 1920, Alice Ballantine Kirjassoff, “FORMOSA THE BEAUTIFUL”, in National Geographic Magazine, page 279. From the entry freshets
  • The doctor suspected that the whitish speck of skin that Gillian had found next to her clitoris was lichen sclerosus, a skin condition that is usually benign.2022 October 17, Rachel E. Gross, “Half the World Has a Clitoris. Why Don’t Doctors Study It?”, in The New York Times. From the entry lichen sclerosus
  • Mutualistic relationships, such as those that give rise to lichens, or plants' relationships with mycorrhizal fungi, were curious exceptions to the rule—where they were acknowledged to exist at all.2020, Merlin Sheldrake, Entangled Life, page 234. From the entry mutualistic
  • The plantlike result of a symbiotic association between algae and fungi, usnea lichen is an important and versatile natural medicine that demands a place in these pages.1997, Gregory L. Tilford, Edible and Medicinal Plants of the West, page 148. From the entry usnea
  • Nonvascular cryptogams, particularly the lichens and mosses, form a majority of the species and biomass exhibiting poikilohydry within desert regions of the world, including North America.1997, S. D. Smith, R. Monson, J. E. Anderson, Physiological Ecology of North American Desert Plants, Springer, page 191. From the entry poikilohydry
  • Beneath the shadow of the First Keep was an ancient lichyard, its headstones spotted with pale lichen, where the old Kings of Winter had laid their faithful servants.1996, George R. R. Martin, A Game of Thrones, Bantam Specta, US (1996), Voyager Books, UK (1996) Chapter 53, "Bran", unumbered page. From the entry lichyard
  • The colonization of the different types of materials by lichens was induced, to a great extent, by the input of bird excrements, giving rise to a characteristic ornithocoprophilous flora.1991, J. Garcia-Rowe, C. Saiz-Jimenez, “Lichens and bryophytes as agents of deterioration of building materials in Spanish cathedrals…. From the entry ornithocoprophilous

Meaning of lichen

  1. noun Any of many symbiotic organisms, being associations of algae and fungi, often found as white or yellow-to-blue–green patches on rocks, old walls, etc.
  2. noun Something which gradually spreads across something else, causing damage.
  3. verb To cover with lichen.

Full definition of lichen

Questions about lichen in a sentence

How do you use lichen in a sentence?
Lichen is used as a noun and verb. For example: “A lichen is a fungus with symbiotic algae among its cells.”
What is a short sentence with lichen?
“In testing for color reaction on dark lichens (e.g.”
What does lichen mean?
Lichen means any of many symbiotic organisms, being associations of algae and fungi, often found as white or yellow-to-blue–green patches on rocks, old walls, etc.

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: lichen (page history and authors) and the entries each sentence comes from. Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws chose the sentences, left out offensive ones and quotations older than 1900, and marked the word in each. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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