Mycology

The twenty-sixth entry is die Flechte, and it leads two lives that English keeps apart. In a field guide it is a lichen, the partnership of a fungus and an alga that crusts a gravestone or hangs from a branch. In a doctor’s waiting room it is a rash, and it turns up in everyday names for skin complaints: die Schuppenflechte is psoriasis. English does use « lichen » for a few skin conditions, but only in clinical Latin; a German speaker uses Flechte in the kitchen. The two senses can even meet in one compound. Die Bartflechte is the grey, beard-like lichen on an old spruce, and it is also an inflammation of the skin where a beard grows. So the word alone rarely settles which one is meant — the tree or the patient in the sentence does.