Lungwort

Lungwort's lobed, lung-shaped form led medieval herbalists to prescribe it for respiratory ailments (doctrine of signatures). While this logic was flawed, the lichen does contain antimicrobial compounds. More importantly, lungwort is an indicator of ancient, undisturbed forest - it requires centuries of ecological continuity to establish.

Lungwort demonstrates that some assets require long, unbroken chains of development. It cannot colonize young forests even if conditions seem suitable - it needs existing colonies nearby to spread, and those colonies need prior colonies, in a chain stretching back centuries. The business parallel is institutional knowledge, cultural capital, and trust networks that take generations to build and cannot be rapidly reconstructed.