First Snow Lichen

First snow this week settled on lawn and between lichen covered blue stone. Not much off rain with some sleet mixed in, the indifferent coating comprised of meager barely ripe flakes as is common this time of season.

Fat wet snowflakes sometimes describe the same pattern as lichen when they land on stone. 

Lichens it turns out, are two animals in one.

Wikipedia reports:
A lichen is a composite organism that arises from algae or cyanobacteria living among filaments of multiple fungi in a mutualistic relationship. The combined lichen has properties different from those of its component organisms…