That makes a lot of sense. It also explains why it's far, far more than a whisper around here. I'm surrounded by swampy woods. Bacteria and fungi run utterly rampant, and the skunk cabbages are...profuse. Delightfully so, fortunately.

Poking around a bit, I see that "lichens produce an arsenal of more than 500 unique biochemical compounds." Oh, yeah, at least some of those are likely to be ramping up production right about now.