July 2013 Desktop Calendar

This is the moss Grimmia trichophylla. It is a scrappy little moss that often grows on rocks. I found this one while hiking out on an exposed boulder in the coast range of California. 

I am in the process of setting up my new microscopes and camera so that I can take some mossy photos from home. I tried getting a shot of this moss under the microscope, but I am still working on adjusting the settings just right. Thus there are two calendar options for July. 

Grimmia trichophylla growing on a rock.

Grimmia through the microscope. 

1 - Single click on the image to open it up in a new window. (If you use the image directly from the blog post you will lose a lot of resolution.)

2 - Right-click (or ctrl-click) on the image, and chose the option that says, "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use as Desktop Picture". The wording may vary.

3 - If the image does not fit your desktop neatly, you may have to adjust the image (Mac: System Preferences - Desktop and Screen Saver - Desktop; Windows: Control Panel - Display - Desktop) and choose "Fill screen" as the display mode of your background image.


For your curiosity, this is what the mosses look like growing on the rock in the field. They are definitely not the most charismatic species and you might miss them if quickly hiking by, but with some magnification they reveal leaves topped by white spiky hair points and sporophytes mixed in that change direction with water. Now I just have to figure out how to capture their motion in action.