
Mother Rhus
Nastassja Noell
22nd March, 2023
In the third post in our new series The Plant Practice, artist and lichenologist Nastassja Noell has a dramatic and transformative encounter with poison ivy in the South Appalachian forest
Nastassja Noell is a lichenologist who struggles to stay within the fenced pastures of science. Her fiction first appeared in Dark Mountain’s ABYSS and she is a recipient of the United Plant Savers’ Deep Ecology Artists Fellowship. She has led lichen biodiversity research projects throughout the Americas, co-authored the book Delmarva Lichens (Torrey), and her writing has appeared in scientific journals as well as Radical Mycology, Patagon Journal, and NW Travel. Nastassja lives in the Southern Appalachians, in a cove forest that whispers stories while she sleeps.