September 2015 Desktop Calendar

Some Grimmiaceae mosses hanging out with an intensely yellow lichen pal 
from the 2015 SO BE FREE moss foray in the San Bernardino Mountains of California.

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 Image as Desktop Picture" or "Save Image As...". The wording may vary. (If saving the image to your computer is the only option, then locate it on your computer and choose the "Set as Desktop Background" or "Use Image as Desktop Picture" option from there.)

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.

Bryophyte Research Podcasts

The American Bryological and Lichenological Society (ABLS) has started a podcast to feature current research on bryophytes and lichens directly from the experts. 



Episode 1 focuses on transcriptomics. Let me try to break this down for you. Transcripts are small messages (mRNA) that are copied from the DNA and are used as templates to make proteins. -omics refers to a field of study. So transcriptomics is the study of transcripts. When you compare the transcripts from different organs or different developmental stages it can point toward genes that are turned on and off between the two, indicating those genes that potentially make them different.  

Episode 2 is about the sex lives of bryophytes and lichens. Fortunately no explanation on the topic is needed there. 

You can listen to the full podcasts here on the ABLS website.

Cell Phone Microscopy

micro phone lens packaging
and case

In my pursuit of portable microscopy I came across this product initially funded through Kickstarter. The micro phone lens is a small plastic disc that sticks to a cell phone's camera lens, turning it into a 15X microscope. I had to try it out and I thought it would be worth the $15 experiment. 

Case with lens in the
lower lefthand corner. 

The lens comes in a small container with an eye-catching black and white design on the top. It is great that the whole setup is so portable, but I am in a constant state of nearly loosing it. I have set my phone down, forgetting to have the lens facing up, only to have the lens come off as I picked up my phone. I have dropped it on the floor covering it in dust. And last night I completely forgot to take the lens off when I was finished and found it stuck on the kitchen table when I went to eat my cereal and read my morning dose of The Economist. Maybe it was just a forgetful and slightly klutzy episode of microscopy, but you get the idea. Beware of loosing this small disc that is slightly larger than the O on your keyboard! Fortunately the lens is also quite resilient. It is bendable and can be easily cleaned with water. 

Let me show you what this little lens can do. I pulled out a dried lichen that I collected on a drive into the California coast range. It is the lace lichen, Ramalina menziesii, aptly named for the lacy filaments that increase the surface area of this lichen, enabling it to better absorb moisture and nutrients from the air. 

Ramalina menziesii the lace lichen

I took the photos below with the micro phone lens stuck to my Nokia Lumina 928 cell phone. The lens requires a camera with at least a 5 megapixel camera and mine is 8.7 megapixels. The center of the photos is in crisp focus, but I was disappointed that the field of view is so small and that parts of the lichen near the edge of the image are thus out of focus. The demo on the website has the entire field of view in focus. That video was taken with a tablet whereas mine were with a phone, so it could be that the interaction between the lens and my phone optics are the issue. 

An even closer view of the lace lichen

Up close with the lace lichen

The other issue I had was stabilizing the camera and taking a photo at the same time. The instructions online recommend using the lens case as a platform for the phone when taking photos. This works pretty well, but I ended up needing to tip my phone to adjust the distance to the sample I was looking at since it wasn't sitting flush against the table.

This company is also in the process of developing a 150X lens and just had another successful Kickstarter project to fund it. After my experience with the 15X lens I think I will hold off on purchasing the higher magnification one. More magnification means a smaller depth of field and I think that the 15X lens is reasonably challenging to focus. I bet that the 150X will be even more difficult. I will wait until some reviews come out before jumping on that one. 

Lily flower

Another plant I examined was a lily that I got in a bouquet from the farmer's market on Saturday. Specifically I zoomed in to take a look at the the pollen-covered anthers.

Anther

The 15X lens gets us significantly closer to the pollen than my cell phone camera can without assistance. Still a small field of view, but all-in-all reasonably good for a 15 dollar addition to my magnification arsenal.  

The pollen up close and personal. 

April 2014 Desktop Calendar

This moss and lichen combo is from my trip last month to Yosemite National Park. I only did photographic collecting and I am still improving my California identifications, thus I was planning to post this calendar without species identifications. But after this weekend's SOBEFREE (a spring outing in California for professionals to head out into the field to observe, collect, and identify bryophytes) I am ready to take a guess.

From the photo this bryophyte appears to be Orthodicranum tauricum. This species may remind you a bit of Dicranum. They both have narrow thin leaves and upright stems. Unlike Dicranum, the leaves of Orthodicranum point in many directions. In Dicranum the leaves are falcate (meaning sickle-shaped) and secund (all pointed in the same direction). It gives Dicranum one of it's common names, broom moss. It looks like the floor has just been swept using a stem and the leaves are now curved and pointing all in the same direction. But I wouldn't recommend it for floor sweeping. It would take way to long to get the chores done.

Anyone have any thoughts on an identification for the lichen? Lichenological books are no longer at my fingertips in my lab here in California, but it would be great to learn the genus or species if someone is familiar.

April Desktop Calendar

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.

Deep Fried Moss

I was incredibly excited to find out about the Danish* restaurant Noma serving fried moss on the menu! My sister heard the story on a podcast from the America's Test Kitchen. In the show, host Christopher Kimball interviews René Redzepi, the chef of Noma, during Segment #2 and the fried mosses are briefly mentioned at the end of their interview. Considering this restaurant is located in Copenhagen* and is on the extremely pricy end I don't think that I will be eating fried mosses there any time soon. But I really wanted to get a look at a plate and I did some hunting around online. 

There are a number of people who have taken photos of their plates and have posted them up online. I didn't want to repost personal photos, so I linked to a few of them that you can check out below.

 Plate #1 - Plate #2 - Plate #3 -Plate #4 - Plate #5

After looking at a few of the plates did you discover the truth? It is not in fact a fried bryophyte, but is a fried lichen! Oh the mossy-misnomers. One of the common names for the lichen Cladonia rangiferina is reindeer moss and that is the organism that is fried and intended for eating. There are, however, mosses on the plates. Many of the plates look to be covered in Leucobryum, the pin cushion moss. Serving platters are typically washed and reused. Do you think they rinse off the mosses and then used them to serve the next customer. I would hate to hear that they tossed out the mosses after a single serving.

Leucobryum

I also wonder if anyone tries to eat the bryophyte mosses off the plate? If they did, I don't think that they would find them too tasty or with much nutritional value. Not many animals eat mosses. Just a few northern creatures, such as caribou and lemmings. Based on caribou stomach contents, they mainly eat mosses during the winter and probably just to fill hungry stomachs. I remember a great graphic showing the percentages of items found in the stomachs of caribou throughout the year with a spike in the mosses during the winter, but I couldn't locate the study. If this reference rings a bell for anyone please drop a message in the comments. 

* An earlier version of this blog post incorrectly locate Noma in Norway. The restaurant Noma is actually located in Copenhagen, Denmark. Thanks to the commenter who pointed out the geographic error.

Growing on Trees in Acadia National Park

My first volume of the journal Bryologist for 2012 has arrived. Thus, I am trying to finish up my reading of articles from 2011. The last one I had to read looked at the interaction between the rain/fog chemistry, the type of tree, and the lichens and bryophytes living on the trees.

Natalie L. Cleavitt, Holly A. Ewing, Kathleen C. Weathers, and Amanda M. Lindsey. 2011. Acidic atmospheric deposition interacts with tree type and impacts the cryptogamic epiphytes in Acadia National Park, Maine, USA. The Bryologist 114 (3): 570-582.

I have been asked several times about whether there are different types of bryophytes that grow on different types of trees. This study really got me thinking about the importance of substrates for bryophytes and lichens. 

Some of their findings...

- Sites with less acidic fog have higher epiphyte biomass.
- Spruce bark is generally more acidic (lower pH) than maple bark. 

(This is not something new but definitely something I want to keep in mind when talking to people about the pH of the bark of different species of trees.) 

- Fog sulfate content and bark pH were good predictors of macro-lichen composition.

vary along the length of a single trunk.

Overall it was a really cool study and I would highly recommend it if you are interested in thinking about the influence of polluted rain/fog on both lichens and bryophytes.

Spring Cleaning

I did a little spring cleaning this week in preparation for a party at my apartment tonight. During the cleaning I ran across this shampoo and conditioner. Oh yes, you can have mosses added to your personal hair-care products. Look there, it says moss right on the bottle. I can't recall if I ever actually used this shampoo/conditioner. I think that I bought it on a lark. Either way it appears to have been discontinued by Aveda.

It lists Iceland Moss extract (Cetraria islandica) as one of the ingredients. But wait, when I looked up this species to find out more information I was in for a shock!

It is not a moss at all, but a lichen that goes by the name of Iceland Moss. Another bryophyte want-to-be. Not only has it been used in hair products, but is edible and has been used in folk medicines. Just goes to show that when it says it is a moss that does not necessarily mean that it is a bryophyte.

My Bryology Bookshelf - V

Another book that I picked up recently was a great book of fabulous images from Bill and Nancy Malcolm, entitled The Forest Carpet. This book is from the authors of the spectacular bryophyte glossary. They cover all three lineages of bryophytes (liverworts, mosses and hornworts), one lineage of ferns, a couple of fern allies (aka. fern friends), and lichens. The images are large, filling the pages of this coffee-table sized book. Each image comes with an informative caption, identifying the specific species pictured and notes the magnification. There are photos of the plants growing in their particular habitat, closeups of the exterior of the plants, and some sections showing the interior arrangements of the cells.

The goal of this book is to make people aware of the smaller organisms that make up the green background that covers the forest floor like a carpet in New Zealand, hence the title. I think that this book does a great job of immersing you into this miniature world!

Some Birds Like the Moss

One of the ornithologists in my department forwarded along this article about Australian woodland bird conservation that mentions mosses.

R.M. Montague-Drake, D.B. Lindenmayer and R.B. Cunningham. 2009. Factors affecting site occupancy by woodland bird species of conservation concern. Biological Conservation Volume 142, Issue 12, Pages 2896-2903.

They focused on  patches of woodland and studied which aspects of the woodland affect the presence of 13 different bird species. One of the factors they measured was the % of the ground or rocks that was covered by mosses and lichens.

They found that 5 of the bird species were more likely to be found in woodlands with high percentages of moss and lichen cover. They lichen-ed them! (Teaching Bryology and Lichenology there were so many bad lichen jokes during the laboratory period, but I still found them totally funny.) 

The authors mention that often in other studies they do not distinguish between 'bare ground' and 'moss and lichen covered'. I would have to agree that there is a big difference between the two. Moss layers hold moisture, prevent soil erosion, and serve as housing for invertebrates and other small critters.

It is great to read that some species of birds thoroughly appreciate their moss and lichen neighbors!

Lichens in the Forests of Norway

Since some of my blog posts have discussed moss gardening in relation to conservation and stewardship, Dr. Elphick recommended an article on lichen conservation. I checked it out and decided to share some of the interesting highlights. (For a review of lichen biology see my posts from October.)

Caruso, A., J. Rudolphi, and G. Thor. 2008. Lichen species diversity and substrate amounts in young planted boreal forests: A comparison between slash and stumps of Picea abies. Biological Conservation 141:47-55.

This study examines the lichens that grow on dead wood in managed forests. The dead wood consists of branches and tree tops (slash) as well as stumps. Forest managers are interested in using this wood for biofuel and this research study explores how this removal will impact the lichen communities.

Out of the 60 species of lichens that were found growing on the slash and stumps, 42 of these species were only found growing on these substrates in the forest. They were not found growing on any of the live trees. Additionally, the stumps had more unique lichen species than the slash. This is most likely due to the larger moisture holding capacity, higher surface area, and greater texture (nooks and crannies) of the stumps. Thus this dead wood represents a important growing surface for lichens and should be taken into account for lichen conservation.

Decaying wood is also a substrate for mosses on the forest floor. I think that it would be interesting to see if many species of mosses grow exclusively on decaying wood similar to lichens. This would lend support to the idea that dead wood should not be removed from the forest floor for biofuel, since it provides a critical substrate for forest organisms.

Reindeer Lichen

This highly branched, 3-dimensional lichen is in the genus Cladina.

Is it a Moss?

It is small, greenish, growing on a tree, but is it a moss? Unfortunately it's not, no matter how much it might envy our green mossy pals it doesn't qualify. This critter is a lichen. Lichens are symbiotic organisms which consist of a fungus and an alga, either blue-green or green. Typically fungi are saprophytic, meaning they feed on dead or decaying material and are not able to produce their own food. This fungus has a different lifestyle and is a farmer. No digging through the trash to find sugars for him. Instead this fungus houses a alga which it keeps happy by supplying water, air, and sunlight. With that combination of supplies that alga undergoes photosynthesis to produce sugars that the fungus uses to live. It is a pretty smart system and works out well for both of the partners. The lichen pictured here is Flavoparmelia caperata, the common greenshield lichen. This species typically grows on bark and can be found across the eastern United States. So when you are out looking for mosses keep an eye out for the lichens as well.