Lichen It
Elaine K. Delcuze Plant Rescue Team Member

ROCK TRIPE STEW
1 LB lean beef stew meat
1 cup chopped celery
1 onion chopped
2 T. butter or olive oil
1 cup sliced carrots
1 cup quartered potatoes
1 handfull rock tripe
2 cups water
salt & pepper to taste

Wash the rock tripe in several changes of cold water. If picked during dry weather, allow the rock tripe to soak overnight to get rid of its purgative and bitter properties. Drain and set aside. In a stew pot, place butter or olive oil and stew meat cooking over high heat until meat is brown. Add 2 cups water, bringing the mixture back to a boil and add the remainder of the ingredients and bring again to a boil. Reduce heat and cook until meat and vegetables are tender. (approximately one hour).

With the sun high in the sky and the wind sharp with the chill of Spring, I set out through the woods to see what plants were brave enough to poke through the litter of dried leaves and face another season. As I passed the evergreen leaves of rhodendron and mountain laurel, more upturned than when I last followed this trail on an overcast day a month before, the temperature of the morning registering a mere 22 degrees, I noticed a slight color to the leaves of the trailing arbutus below and an erectness to the round galax leaves along the bank. But still no flower or fern brave or energetic enough to acknowledge that Spring was anything more than a day numbered on the calendar.

As I sipped from my water bottle in a protected area with a rock face warmed by the sun, I spied colonies of dark, leatherlike patches gilding the granite rocks surface. The underside of each patch was a suede-like black and the top was a smooth leathery,gray-green color. Each patch was attached to the rock at its center as if by an umbilical cord. My tree, fern, wildflower, and mushroom field guides in my pack were to no avail. Only the camera and patience could help me now.

Returning home, I scanned the botanical resources on the bookshelves to no avail. So I decided to call a botanist friend and proceeded to describe my discovery. Rock tripe, Umbilicaria mamulata, she said half-way through my description of this "thing" I found.

Since then I have found that undisturbed natural boulders are home to a diverse and interesting assemblage of life forms including mosses and lichens. Lichens acutally consist of two organisms, a green algae and a fungus that work together symbiotically. The former photosynthesizes food, carbohydrates and vitamins to keep itself and the fungus alive, and the fungus gathers inorganic material from the rock and water and provides shelter for the algae. Neither could survive there without the other, but together as a lichen they thrive, enduring conditions that would prove deadly to other organisms.

Lichens are however, sensitive to atmospheric pollution, heavy metals, radiation and ozone, and are therefore bioindicators of air quality. Lichens inhabit every bioregion with the North American continent boasting some 3600 of the 14000 species worldwide. They are among the worlds oldest plants.

Rock tripe has a long and colorful history, having been boiled as an emergency ration by George Washington's troops at Valley Forge. Arctic explorers as well as mountain men have survived on it. Rock tripe is purported to contain about one-third more calories than equal amounts of honey, corn flakes, or hominy. In Japan one of the Umbilicarias is called "iwa-take" or rock mushroom and is used in salads and fried in fat. Generally this lichen is not considered as a food crop, however, due to its slow growth- approximately one centimeter per year. Other uses of rock tripe include its serving as a tonic or bitters when the broth is added to gin. Some species are used as colorful dyes. Medically, rock tripe can be dried and reduced to a powder for use on mouth cankers and sore gums and was used as an antibiotic to treat staph infections.

Rock Tripe can be found on rocks at the higher elevations of Brasstown Bald, Tray Mountain, Ivy Log, Hightower, Blood Mountain, Slaughter Mountain, Double Knobs and the Tusquities.

Many of our native plants have vivid histories, yet we seem to ignore them and replace them at alarming rates with tropicals and neo-tropicals. If you are planning land disturbing activities on your property, consider not only the flowering native plants that flourish there, but also the areas which are home to the lichens and mosses. Be sure to make contact with Native Plant Rescue Project under the direction of the Preservation Committee at the Georgia Mountain Research and Education Center. Contact Jennifer Cordier, Chairman, at 706- 745-9317 (ivylog@alltel.net) or Glen Henderson (abletinker@aol.com).