A vocabulary of landscape — a landscape of words
1367 entries
lithophyte
A lithophyte is a plant that grows on bare rock, rooted to the surface rather than in a crack, and living on rain, dust, and whatever it can break down from the stone and from its own dead tissue. Many orchids and ferns are lithophytes, as are mosses and a great many lichens. They are the first colonists on a fresh rock surface and the ones that make soil for everything after them.
Etymology
The word is built from the Greek for stone and the Greek for plant, and it belongs to the same family as chasmophyte for a plant of rock crevices and epiphyte for one growing on another plant. The distinction between a lithophyte and a chasmophyte is real and useful: one is on the rock and one is in it.
Notes
Lithophytes do most of the work of turning stone into ground. Lichens release acids that etch the surface, mosses trap the resulting grit and their own dead material, and the pocket of organic matter that accumulates is what a vascular plant can eventually root into. On a lava flow or a fresh moraine, the sequence is visible in progress and can be dated.