Jun 15, 2024
I am very into lichens and moss that look like little creechers
I am very into lichens and moss that look like little creechers
I love being a botanist bc I will go to a place, start a conversation with an employee like “I have a really weird question for you”
And then walk out of there 5 min later with moss in a Tupperware
moss mfriday #4: Bartramia pomiformis (Common Apple Moss)
[image credit]
Common apple moss is an adorable species of Bartramia that forms these little apple-shaped sporophytes. Each capsule has a cap with a tiny beak, giving the illusion of a stem. B. pomiformis grows all over the world, mostly on dirt, rocks, and felled tree trunks on humid forest floors.
This moss has lanceolate (lance-shaped) leaves, which curl when dry and straighten out when wet. They also form particularly long seta (sporophyte stems) compared to other similar species.
If you compare the leaf lengths of different species of mosses, you might notice that mosses which live under the cover of trees grow longer than mosses without a forest's protection. This is because moss's whole schtick is water retention, and if your leaves are long enough to be rustled around by the wind, you're going to lose a lot of water. Trees catch the wind in their leaves and slow it down, which allows mosses in forests to grow longer without losing precious moisture. This is also the reason that sporophyte capsules often grow much taller than the moss leaves - so the spores can catch the wind!
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a developing slime mold on Polytrichum moss by Anne Iskogen, Sweden.
Zoopsis argentea! One of my favourite leafy liverworts, from the family Lepidoziaceae. This is one of our smallest liverworts in Australia- its lateral leaves are made up of just two cells. It's very common in the rainforests in eastern Vic where it's epiphytic on logs and tree ferns. It's a fun one to show students as it sort of breaks your brain about what constitutes a 'leafy' liverwort.
Everybody else is looking up at the big beautiful waterfall. Not me. I’m looking at the mud around the bottom. for liverworts.
Sphagnum papillosum Lindb. : showing the diagnostic shape and namesake papillosity of the chlorocysts in a branch leaf cross-section. To get past subgenus Sphagnum, that was all I needed, but getting a pretty 1 or 2 cells thick cross-section isn't easy. This subgenus is easy to recognize macroscopically by its large cucullate (spoon shaped) leaves, but the main thing that helps get them to species is these cross sections.
a whole world we truly know nothing about right at our feet