#1877 - Lunularia cruciata - Crescent-cup Liverwort
Spotted growing around the irrigation sprinklers in the gardens of the Melbourne Immigration Museum. The only species in the genus Lunularia and family Lunulariaceae. As with the spleenworts, the common name is derived from their shape and imagined usefulness against liver complaints (often themselves imagined).
A robust and hardy thallose liverwort, common in shady damp spots in gardens. It resembles the better-known Marchantia, but in this liverwort the gemma cups are crescent-shaped rather than circular (hence 'lunularia'). Gemma cups contain modified clumps of tissue - gemmae - that can be splashed out by raindrops to become new plants. Probably originally native to Europe, and around the Mediteraanean, where the sexual forms (cross-shaped, hence 'cruciata') are most common. In other parts of the world, it relies more on asexual reproduction via gemmae.
Liverworts are typically small, with individual plants less than 10 cm long, but some species can cover large patches of ground, or whatever substrate they prefer. Most of the 9000 estimated species are found in humid locations although there are aquatic, desert and Arctic species. Some species are minor weeds in shady greenhouses or gardens.
