October 2014 Desktop Calendar

Another moss from my August vacation to New York and Connecticut. This one is Atrichum crispum. Unlike other Atrichum species, this one does not have lamellae running down the midrib. It has relatively large translucent leaves and teeth on the edges. The leaf blade is smooth but slightly folded into a V when wet. It is a bit challenging to tell this one from a Miniaceae without capsules. The capsules of Atrichum release spores via a salt-shaker mechanism, whereas the Miniaceae have peristome teeth that move in response to changes in humidity.

Fortunately I had my handy Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians field guide with me to help with this identification.  

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.

More from The Signature of All Things

***Spoiler Alert***

This post may contain plot details and quotes from The Signature of All

In the midst of the drama and intrigue that plays out in this book are some great mossy points for discussion. 

At one point Alma mentions that mosses have no internal skeleton to support themselves growing tall, thus they are relatively short. Additionally they cannot transport water within their bodies. Bryophytes are typically called non-vascular because that lack the conducting tissues of xylem and phloem. These tissues transport water and sugars to and from the roots and leaves. 

This is a distinction that I would often point out between bryophytes and other plants. More recently I have come to question and debate this point. Some mosses do have cells that move water and sugars internally from one part or their body to another, called hydroids and leptoids. They are similar to the cells of xylem and phloem of vascular plants. Some of them are dead at maturity and/or have modified end walls with perforations, allowing for faster transport. What these cells lack is the compound lignin in their cell walls. Lignin both strengthens the cell walls and makes them impermeable to water. Creating stronger and less leaky transport tubes. Lignin is what gives wood its strength and enables trees to grow tall. Mosses have some of the chemical precursors to lignin (Ligrone et al. 2008), but they did not evolve this compound. So I get that lignin is important, but some bryophytes do have conducting cells that move water and sugars around in their bodies. I wouldn't call them vascular, but they are not lacking internal water transport either. 

------

Alma describes mosses as being defined by what they lack. No flowers, no seed, no fruits, no roots, and no internal skeleton. Mosses also do not engage in sex. All these points are true except for the last one. Mosses do in fact produce offspring by sexual reproduction. They have eggs and swimming sperm that fuse to form the sporophyte offspring. My guess is that this inaccuracy was intentional. 

The alternation of generation in plants was elucidated in 1851 by Wilhelm Hofmeister (Kaplan and Cooke, 1996). Though Alma is described as having corresponded with researchers around the world, she may not have read Hofmeister's work. He was based in Germany and his 1851 work was printed by his family's publishing company. I am not sure how widely the work would have circulated at that time. Thus at this time the reproduction of mosses was a "mystery to the naked human eye". This aspect lead to their being known by the evocative name Cryptogamae, which means hidden marriage. 

So Alma's statement that mosses do not engage in sex was an accurate statement for that time in our scientific knowledge of plants. Kudos to the author and her bryological guru for their attention to detail. I think it is good when we acknowledge that science is not a static bank of knowledge. We are constantly discovering and expanding our understanding of the world around us. Looking back at the history of where science has been helps us to appreciate how far we have come

This is part of a series of posts about the bryology in The Signature of All. 
Click here for all the posts in the series. 

References

Kaplan, D. and T. Cooke. 1996. The genius of Wilhelm Hofmeister: The origin of causal-analytical research in plant development. American Journal of Botany 83: 1647-1660.

Ligrone, R., A. Carafa, J. G. Duckett, K. S. Renzaglia, K. Ruel. 2008. Immunocytochemical detection of lignin-related epitopes in cell walls in bryophytes and the charalean alga Nitella. Plant Systematics and Evolution 270: 257-272.

Hofmeister, W. 1851. Vergleichende Untersuchungen der Keimung, Entfaltung und Fruchtbildung hoherer Kryptogamen (Moose, Farne, Equisetaceen, Rhizokarpeen and Lykopodiaceen). und der Samenbildung der Coniferen. {Translated Title: Comparative studies of the germination, development  and fruiting of higher cryptogams (mosses, ferns, Equisetaceae, Rhizocarp and Lycopodiaceae). and seed formation of conifers.} F. Hofmeister, Leipzig.

Addressing the Gender Issue

***Spoiler Alert***

This post may contain plot details and quotes from The Signature of All Things. 

It may seem unsurprising that a female bryologist in the early 1800's would disguise her gender on her initial publications. At the time women were not welcomed into scientific circles. Thus Alma's first publications were authored A. Whittaker. Later in the book, with age and time she publishes under her full name, Alma Whittaker. 

"No initials were appended to the name - no evidence of degrees, no membership in distinguished gentlemanly scientific organizations. Nor was she even a "Mrs.," with the dignity that such a title affords a lady. By now, quite obviously, everyone knew she was a woman. It mattered little." 

The reason she says it mattered little is that the world of bryophytes is not a competitive domain and thus she had been allowed to enter with little resistance. This is not just a casual statement. It is supported by the data (Special Report on Women as Academic Authors, 1665-2010 - Chronicle of Higher Education). From 1665-1970 only 8.4% of Ecology and Evolution articles were published by women, whereas in the field of Bryology almost twice as many female authors published (16.3%). Unfortunately disparities in publication rates between the sexes still remain (see the report's data from 1991-2010). 

Why do these disparities still exist? Could it be that our innate biases against women in the sciences negatively impacts women's publication rates? It has been shown that both male and female scientists are significantly biased against female applicants for research positions (Moss-Racusin et al. 2012). This article is behind a paywall. If you do not have access and are interested in reading the full study drop me an email. I could see this spilling over into the realm of scientific publication. It is often easy to tell whether someone is male or female by their first name, opening the door to inherent biases, which could influence both editors and reviewers. 

Inspired by the research of Moss-Racusin and others, professors in the Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Department at the University of Connecticut are carrying out a gender-blind faculty search. Both applicants and reviewers are requested to use initials or refer to the person applying as 'the candidate'. In an earlier experiment, they attempted to redact all gender-identifying information from applications, but one committee member was able to guess the applicant's gender by the difference in space he vs. she takes up in a sentence (Jones and Urban 2013). They outline and give detailed examples to guide the removal of gender-identifying content. 

Even with these detailed guidelines, there is seemingly no way to address the potential issue that recommendation letter writers typically use different words when describing men vs. women (Madera et al. 2009) [HT to M.T-T. for bringing this point up at lunch]. An example might be using action words such as "independent" and "confident" to describe a man and communal words such as "nurturing" and "helpful" to describe a woman. Hopefully letter writers that are writing for a gender-neutral application will be more aware of gender-biases and thus some of these language differences will disappear. I wonder if they could use this gender-blind search to study that? They could address the question: Do recommendation letter writers use less gender-biased language when they are writing for a gender-neutral job search, compared to a job search where gender-neutrality was not explicitly mentioned in the job advertisement? I would be really interested to know if a gender-neutral job search could also influence recommendation letter language. 

Overall I think that this gender-blind faculty search is a progressive undertaking that will help raise awareness about gender-biases that still exist in the sciences and I am really interested to hear how the process goes. I feel positive that the steps they are taking will decrease bias. What I still wonder is whether this type of job search will result in an increase in the number of female faculty hired? Unfortunately this job search only gives us a sample size of one. Similar efforts are needed nation-wide before we will see if decreasing gender-bias results in more women faculty in the sciences. 

Just the Tip of the Iceberg - Part 3 The Signature of All Things

***Spoiler Alert***

This post may contain plot details and quotes from The Signature of All Things. 

The first five pages of Part 3 focus on mosses with an intensity that covers a wide breadth of topics. 

We are regaled with the fact that mosses are "effortless to transport". They are not only small and light, but easily dried and thus avoid spoilage. Due to these qualities, mosses have been used as packing material for goods and other plants for centuries. The Whittaker botanical company also took advantage of these mossy features, using them to ship plants. Thus Alma not only traded and imported mosses herself, but she was able to mine the crates stored in her family's warehouses, which were filled with dried mosses from around the globe. 

After years of study, Alma accumulated an extensive herbarium. She collected over 8,000 species of mosses, which seems to me a pretty high number considering Alma is written to have worked about 150 years ago. Currently the number of species of mosses is close to 12,500, so that puts Alma at having collected and identified 64% of present day moss species diversity. All without leaving her home in Pennsylvania. I wonder how many species of moss were described by 1848? I am not sure where I would even go to try to locate that fact? A species count from Hedwig would be too early, whereas Brotherus would be too late. Who would have been a contemporary bryologist of Alma Whittaker, living and working during the first half of the 1800's? I will have to do some digging around to see what bryological history I can uncover. 

Alma also writes several books that as a bryologist I would most certainly have on my shelf. By 48 years of age she has written The Complete Mosses of Pennsylvania and The Complete Mosses of the Northeastern United States and has just begun work on The Complete Mosses of North America. The titles of the books could have been a little more creative or perhaps variable, but the sense of her productivity is firmly established. 

In leu of these imaginary books, I would recommend these real identification guides for exploring mosses in Pennsylvania and the Northeast: Outstanding Mosses and Liverworts of Pennsylvania and Nearby States and Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians. As for a good field guide that tackles mosses across all of North America, there are not any that I particularly like. Also a book covering mosses across the entire continent would be a pretty large tome to tote around in the field. My personal preference for identification is a regional guide with a more limited set of species to sift through. If you have a smartphone and internet access, a light field option with wide coverage could be the online Bryophyte Flora of North America. A key to the genera is posted here. Unfortunately all the links are broken and thus it is not connected to the descriptions. The full descriptions are arranged by family here, but you need to know the connections between the two to make them work together. The key is preliminary, so hopefully they will be linked in the final version.

The Mosses of her Passion - The Signature of All Things

From the LuEsther T. Mertz Library of
The New York Botanical Garden, Bronx, NY

***Spoiler Alert***

This post may contain plot details and quotes from The Signature of All Things. 
Proceed with caution!

The mosses have finally arrived as significant characters in Part 3! We discover that Alma has decided to devote her time and energies to studying mosses in the genus Dicranum and she becomes the world expert on this group.  I am most familiar with Dicranum scoparium, the broom moss, which is common in eastern deciduous forests. It's common name comes from the leaves that are all curving in the same direction, as though the moss had been used to sweep the floor. It is one of the first species I like to teach people when walking in the woods. It is charismatic and easy to recognize. 

The moss pictured in this plate is Dicranum squarrosum. The specific epithet of the scientific name describes the leaves of this species, which stick out at right angles to the stem. This arrangement is due to the leaves having a bend in them, which can be seen at the bottom center of the plate. 

It was a bit of a tease, or foreshadowing, that these images of Dicranum were placed at the end of Part I, long before Alma discovered her passion for mosses. Mostly it had me wondering when we would start to hear more about the mosses.  Stay tuned for more to come on the mosses of Part 3!

The Signature of All Things: Part 2 - Catching bryophyte fever

***Spoiler Alert***

This post may contain plot details and quotes from Parts 1 & 2 of The Signature of All Things. Proceed with caution!

The second part of The Signature of All Things focuses on the childhood of the main character Alma Whittaker. In my mind the true main characters, the bryophytes, have yet to truly arrive on the scene. There is a brief mention of mosses being used by birds as material for nest building. Alma also uses mosses to fill the chinks in the walls of her study to cut down on winter drafts. Hornworts come up during a scientific discussion between Alma and her colleague George Hawkes. He describes them to another friend as "...among our least sophisticated plants-". I take mild offense to that statement. I think hornworts are super interesting and highly sophisticated in their ability to establish a mutualistic interaction with cyanobacteria (blue-green algae). They have pores on the underside of the plant that open to allow the algae to enter. The algae then live and grow inside of the hornwort helping to fix nitrogen, making it available for the hornwort to use. I think that establishing a relationship like that is pretty sophisticated. Don't you?

At the tail end of Part 2 bryophytes take their rightful place at center stage. Alma has a revelation that right beneath her nose, on the land she has known her entire life, is a world unexplored. The miniature world of mosses. An entire rock may be covered by dozens of species that occupy distinct niches. A little sunnier over here, a little wetter over there, makes for diverse habitats even within a few feet. It is amazing how small changes in the microclimate can make such a big difference to the bryophytes. The description of Alma's epiphany to focus her botanical energies on mosses is full of lovely imagery, such as the passage below. 

"Now the miniature forest below her gaze sprang into majestic detail. She felt her breath catch. This was a stupefying kingdom. This was the Amazon jungle as seen from the back of a harpy eagle. She rode her eye above the surprising landscape, following its paths in every direction. Here were rich, abundant valleys filled with tiny trees of braided mermaid hair and minuscule, tangled vines. Here were barely visible tributaries running through that jungle..."

Having done so myself, falling in love with bryophytes is an amazing experience. Upon closer inspection, you realize that there is a world of wonder to explore in miniature. The closer you look the more there is to discover. An adventure that can last a lifetime. 

The Signature of All Things: Part 1

I read through the first part of The Signature of All Things this past weekend. There is not much to report on the bryological front. Mosses only popped in once or twice. They were used to pack seeds and other plants for transport during long ocean voyages of the 18th and 19th centuries. In this part of the book we are briefly introduced to the main character, Alma, at her birth. Mainly this section focuses on Alma's grandfather, father, and thus her botanical roots.

This book is at the top of my pleasure reading pile. More updates to come after I read through Part 2. 

The Mystery of the Missing Moss

This is a tale of a small group of mosses in the genus Sorapilla. Over the past 150 years they were located by scientists only a handful of times in the wild. That is until recently. A undergraduate student found a population of Sorapilla papuana in Queensland, Australia. 

The real mystery about these mosses is determining its closest relatives. It has a very unique morphology = (exterior size and shape), which has helped researchers come up with hypotheses about its relatives. This new discovery of live mosses means that DNA can be extracted from the plants and used to test these ideas, potentially resolving the conundrum of Sorapilla's relatives.

Honestly I had never known about this genus before hearing about it's recent re-discovery. The article (linked to above) alludes to its unique morphology and I was interested to learn more about it. These mosses grow in tropical regions, so off I went to my Guide to the Bryophytes of Tropical America. To my surprise and delight I discovered that Sorapilla mimics some of my favorite mosses, the Fissidentaceae. 

Both Sorapilla and the Fissidentaceae have leaves in two-ranks, meaning they have a row that runs along the right side of the stem opposite a row that runs down the left side. Most mosses have leaves that spiral around the stem, sticking off in all possible directions. The other cool feature about the leaves is that they are divided into two regions a single layered lamina at the top and a region below where the leaf forks, creating a pocket that clasps the leaf above it. Based on my reading, these are the only two groups of mosses with this type of leaf. Despite these similarities, other features of the sporophyte indicate that Sorapilla and the Fissidentaceae are not closely related. I am really excited to hear what the findings are from the DNA data and which mosses are the closest relatives of Sorapilla. If in the end it is not a close relative of the Fissidentaceae, then it will be another cool example of convergent evolution. Two distantly related species evolving similar morphologies.  

Click here for a link to an image of Sorapilla papuana. 
Not to be confused with sopapillas, the tasty fried pastry.

For comparison, this is a photo of Fissidens that
I took while hiking in the Sierra Nevada Mountains. 

I find it a funny irony that the closest town to the population of the rediscovered moss is called Mossman. It sounds like a town full or moss super heros. MossMan! However, the town name was originally Mosman, so it probably wasn't named for moss plants.  

Hat tip to Dr. Tobias Landberg for sending me the article about this discovery. 

A New Moss Identification Guide

I recently reviewed this new moss field guide for the Botanical Society of America's Plant Science Bulletin. The link below will take you to the Fall 2013 volume. My review is on pages 131 and 132.

Budke JM. 2013. Book Review of Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians. Plant Science Bulletin 59(3): 131-132.

Overall I think that this is a really great text and would highly recommend it for anyone interested in identifying mosses in the northeastern United States and Canada from Wisconsin to Nova Scotia and south throughout the Appalachian Mountains. (Full disclosure: I did receive a free copy of the book when writing this review, but was in no other way compensated.) 

For another perspective, check out this review: Kimmerer, RW. 2013. Field Guide to Northeast Mosses. The Bryologist 116(3):321-322.

In the same volume of the Plant Science Bulletin (pg 137-138) there is a review of the latest book by Amy Stewart The Drunken Botanist: The Plants That Create the World’s Great Drinks. I have one of her earlier books Wicked Plants: The Weed That Killed Lincoln's Mother and Other Botanical Atrocities. I really enjoyed this earlier book and am looking forward to reading the new one! Exploring the plants that are deadly and atrocious is one way to get people interested in plants. Enlightening them about plants used in alcoholic beverages is sure to be another fun way to start thinking about plants. A fact of note: the review of Stewart's book is by Alexandra Boni an undergraduate student from Bucknell University. Kudos to her for writing a nice review of the book. It most certainly has me excited to check it out!

UPDATE - 22 Nov 2013 - Another positive review of this book. Hedenäs, L. 2013. Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians. 173(4): 790–791.

The Bryophytes on the Cover

The front cover of Elizabeth Gilbert's new novel The Signature of All Things features some lovely bryophyte paintings. They are from the 1905 edition of the German encyclopedia Meyers Konversations-Lexikon. I have not had the pleasure of perusing this encyclopedia, but I do have fond memories of an English version of encyclopedia Britannica. My parents bought a set when I was in elementary school. Black and red cover, crisp glossy pages. Ah, memories. Can you tell I am a bit of a bibliophile? For those of you who have not enjoyed a hardbound encyclopedia set, they were the precursor to google and wikipedia. Want to know something about a fast animal, far-a-way country, historic event, or odd fruit? As my dad would always say, "Go check the encyclopedia." It provided tons of information to answer my pressing questions and constant need to know. Sometimes my sister and I would just sit down with a volume and flip through pages, reading about interesting topics for fun. Did I mention that I grew up in rural Indiana and there weren't a lot of entertainment options?  


Back to the bryophytes of the beautiful image on the cover of The Signature of All Things. In terms of bryophyte identification, there are some complex thalloid liverworts in front with tall antheridiophores and archegoniophores springing up from the ribbons below. Antheridiophores are the male reproductive structures that produce sperm; archegoniophores are the female reproductive structures that make eggs.  On either edge of the cover are mosses with sporophyte capsules elevated on tall stalks. They are most definitely members of the Splachnaceae, the dung moss family. I love saying that name (SP-laCK!-n-ace-a-ee). It has a very dung-y ring to the name! My best guess on a species level identification is Splachnum luteum.  The common names for members of this genus are really great. They include umbrella moss and petticoat moss, which describe the shape of the capsules. I think that petticoat moss is especially fitting for the cover of a book set in Victorian times, about a woman who most likely wore petticoats. 

A New Botanical Heroine

Rarely do female botanists appear as characters in pop culture. Exceptions that I can think of are Poison Ivy from the Batman comics and movies. She was a botanist before becoming a plant-loving super villain. Also there was the horrible movie Paycheck that featured a female botanist as the love interest. This movie sticks in my mind because the portrayal of her 'botany lab' was completely fantastical and laughable.

In comparison, I have much higher hopes for the botanical heroine in Elizabeth Gilbert's new novel The Signature of All Things. Not only is the heroine a botanist, but she is a bryologist! I have heard good things about the book both through reviews in the popular media and fellow bryologists. Fortunately for me I have great friends that indulge my passion for mosses and I was gifted this book for my upcoming birthday. I will keep you posted on my reading progress and any bryological gems that I find!

For more about the book, check out Barbara Kingsolver's review in the New York Times.

Rare Mosses and Liverworts of England

It has been a full week with little time for me to work up my own blog post. Instead I encourage you to check out a post over on the IAB blog by a bryological colleague, Juan Carlos Villarreal. It is a book review of a new text focusing on rare mosses and liverworts of England. He gives you the highlights of the book and includes the details of one rare moss species Telaranea murphyae Paton. Enjoy!

Click here for a link to the IAB blog.

Do you have Pteridomania?

On the title page of her book Fern Fever: The Story of Pteridomania Sarah Whittingham informs us of the following definitions.

"Pteris Greek word for a fern, derived from pteron, meaning feather or wing. Pteridophytes The ferns and fern allies. Pteridologist One who studies ferns scientifically. Pteridomania Fern madness. Pteridomaniac One who suffers fern madness."

I just started exploring this book written about the Victorian obsession with ferns. It is a large coffee-table sized book with a myriad of color images and photos of all things fern. The introduction covers how the fern craze began in the 1850's with collectors traveling the world and sending ferns back to England for cultivation. With the invention of the Wardian case, a small terrarium, ferns were brought into people's homes. At the same time many authors were publishing books about growing ferns and the types of ferns native to Britain. Naturalist and gardeners alike could not get enough of them. Ferns even made it into fashion as a design embellishment on dresses. 

I think that it is going to be a fun and educational read. I would recommend it for anyone who is already obsessed with ferns or would like to join in the craze. It will also be appealing to the history-minded and lovers of the Victorian era.   

At this time, science was the realm of mostly learned, wealthy white men. Women with botanical interests, also white and wealthy, collected, drew, and dried plant specimens under the purview of a gentle hobby. They knew little about how ferns reproduced. One fantastical idea was that they flowered only once per year and the spores could only be collected at night. Around the same time Wilhelm Hofmeister was just publishing his findings on the alternation of generations and plant life cycles. Interesting to think how far science has come both in our knowledge about plants and increased inclusiveness of people from diverse backgrounds. 

I leave you with a poem that Sarah Whittingham includes in her book on page 40. I especially like it because it contains a shout-out to my favorite ferny friends, the mosses.  

Auld Botany Been was wont to jog

Thro' rotten slough and quagmire bog 

O'er brimful dykes and marshes dank, 

Where Jack o' Lanterns play and prank,   

To seek a cryptogameous store 

Of mosses and carex and fungus hoare, 

Of ferns and brakes and such-like sights

 As tempt out scientific weights

On winter's day; but most his joy

Was finding what's called Osman's Roy.

- Plues A Summer Study of Ferns  

Want to learn the California mosses?

If your answer to this question is yes, then you are in luck. There are some great resources out there to learn to identify mosses in California. 

One is this book California Mosses by Bill and Nancy Malcolm, Jim Shevock, and Dan Norris. This book is amazing! It has over 300 pages of color photos and covers 176 moss genera that live in California. Identification via leaves is the main focus of this book. The idea is to pull a few leaves off of a stem, place them in a drop of water on the back of your hand, and then examine them with a magnifying lens (hand lens or loupe). There are black and white images of all the leaves that show the general outline and midrib as well as unique features such as hair points or a curved margin. These drawings are sorted at the back of the book by genus and unique features. 

Another resource for moss identification in California is the California Moss eFlora. This is an online moss identification resource that includes keys to the genera and species, line drawings and photos of the taxa, and maps with species distributions. 

I am new to using both of these resources, but think that they are going to be super helpful as I explore the moss flora of California. If you have any thoughts to share on these resources feel free to leave a comment. 

Moss Witch

My winter break reading included a book of science fiction short stories, entitled "When it Changed: Science into Fiction". I heard about this book through an article in Field Bryology from the British Bryological Society. I can't seem to locate the exact article, but as soon as I find it I will post it up.

This anthology piqued my interest due to the interaction between scientists and story writers. For each of the 16 short stories, a writer was paired with a scientist. Through a series of interviews the research and scientific interests of the scientist were discussed and woven into the science fiction story of the authors. Each short story is followed by an afterword from the scientist commenting on the story.

Of special interest for me was the story by Sara Maitland, "Moss Witch". She collaborated with Dr. Jennifer Rowntree, currently a researcher at the University of Manchester. The story made the 'short list' for the 2009 BBC National Short Story Award. The full story was read on air by Hannah Gordon, but the full audio seems to be no longer accessible on the web.

The story has also been made into a stop action film. It struck me that a lot of the greenery used in the scenes are not actually mosses. They are lichens some of which look to have been painted. I understand that live mosses are typically pretty wet and that might result in a lot of smearing and wetting of the painted background. However the fact that they didn't use mosses seems a little counter to the goal of integrating accurate science into science fiction.  

Overall think that it is a really vivid and interesting story. However being highly steeped in the scientific world of mosses, all of the mossy science details were distracting to my fact checking sensibilities. I was able to fully immerse myself in the adventures of the other stories in the anthology. I think that those of you with a love for but less immersion in mosses will find the story quite enjoyable. If anyone finds a full link to the audio or video for the story it would be great to hear about it in the comments. 

     Happy New Year!

My Bryology Bookshelf - VI

Field guides to mosses are not super common. If you are a longtime reader of this blog you are probably familiar with my frustrations that there is not a good field guide to the mosses and other bryophytes of eastern North America. There are highly technical books that require the use of a microscope (Crum and Anderson's Mosses of Eastern North America). One of the non-technical books that I have is Walk Softly Upon the Earth: A Pictorial Field Guide to Missouri Mosses, Liverworts and Lichens, by Lisa Potter Thomas and James R. Jackson. This book includes photographs of each species with a scale bar to help with the sizes of the plants and color illustrations for many. The descriptions have a wealth of information covering the habit, species they might be mistaken for and information on the etymology of the names. 

I found it especially interesting and fun that they start the book in just the same way that I start my presentations about mosses. We both start by going through all the plants that are sometimes called moss or are mistaken for mosses but really are not. There is also a section where they discuss the mythology and lore associated with mosses. Scattered throughout the book are whimsical line drawings of the good fairies from German folklore called Moosweibchen. 

I think that the title of the book is a perspective that all of us can strive to implement in our lives. I thoroughly appreciate the authors cautions about over-collecting plants from the wild. I think that is a point that some books on bryophytes miss.

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!

My Bryology Bookshelf IV

I led a moss walk several weeks back. On that outing I heard about a book that includes some bryophyte identification that I had not seen before. It is A Golden Guide: Non-Flowering Plants by F. S. Shuttleworth and H. S. Zim. It is an older book, with the latest edition having been published in 1967, and is out of print. I found a used edition online. It covers a broad array of organisms, including Algae, Fungi, Lichens, Mosses, Liverworts, Hornworts, Ferns, and Gymnosperms.

The book describes 34 different mosses, 12 liverworts and one hornwort. There is a short introduction to mosses that includes information on their life cycle and basic morphology. The guide includes small color illustrations. They don't give too much detail but do give you a general sense of the morphology of the plants. Each moss has a short sentence about the habitat, some information about the species morphology and then some numbers to indicate the general size of the plants.

My main critique is that a majority of the bryophytes in the book do not have their scientific names listed. They only have a common name. Contrary to other scientists I know, I like to use common names when teaching mosses to the public. However I always use them in conjunction with the scientific name. Common names can vary depending on the area of the country you are in or which language you speak. Scientific names are all in latin and thus have stability no matter where you are or what language you speak. They are critical to be sure that everyone is communicating about the same type of plant. From the descriptions, some of the genera are easy enough to identify but others may take a little more effort to identify. 

If you are looking for a bryophyte guide, I don't think that it is the first book that I would buy. However if you already have quite a few books it might be another interesting one to add to your collection.

My Bryology Bookshelf - II

Another book on my shelf is Gardening with Moss by F. F. Rockwell. I am not sure when I picked up this book, but there it was hiding on the shelf and I decided to give it another look...

And now I remember why I cannot recall when I picked up this book. The title is quite deceiving! You might think that it is another book about growing mosses in your garden similar to these two (here and here) that I have discussed before. But no, this book was written in the 1920's and the title should be 'How to use Peat Moss (Sphagnum) when Gardening Flowering Plants'. It is interesting as a historic text. The first chapter is all about peat moss and its utility in the garden. This chapter also features a nice story about the author's first meeting with peat moss. From what I can tell the rest of the book does have sound gardening advice, but it is probably the same information that you could get from a more recent book.

Overall I wouldn't recommend it if you are looking for a book on Moss Gardening, but as a history or gardening buff it might prove interesting. You can check out a limited preview of the book here at GoogleBooks.  

My Bryology Bookshelf - I

I recently started a list of recommended bryology books on my sidebar. However I wasn't sure how many of these books I had talked about in actual blog posts. So I decided to start up a group of posts that walk through the bryology books on my shelf.

A Trailside Guide to Mosses and Liverworts of the Cherokee National Forest by Paul Davison and How to Know the Mosses and Liverworts by Conrad and Redfearn are both discussed here. 

I have also posted about couple of books on growing mosses. Native Ferns, Moss, and Grasses: From Emerald Carpet to Amber Wave, Serene and Sensuous Plants for the Garden by William Cullina of the New England Wild Flower Society and Moss Gardening: Including Lichens, Liverworts and Other Miniatures by George Schenk.

I also wrote about the fabulous bryophyte dictionary, Mosses and Other Bryophytes, an Illustrated Glossary by Bill and Nancy Malcolm.

One of the books on my list that I have yet to talk about is my advisor's most recent book Introduction to Bryophytes by Alain Vanderpoorten and Bernard Goffinet.

When I helped teach and Undergraduate Course in Bryology a few years back we could have really used this text. We used some excerpts from the book Bryophyte Biology. I think that this is a great book too. Unfortunately it is pretty tough for the average undergraduate. Bryophyte Biology is geared more for a graduate student or professional audience.

I have yet to use the new book Introduction to Bryophytes to teach, but I think that it will work really well for that purpose. It is aimed at undergraduate biology students or science savvy amateurs. I have also used the book to hunt up some fun bryology facts for use during my moss walks. If you want to really dig into all the different types of bryophytes and their morphology then this is probably not the text for that endeavor. However it is a look at the biology of bryophytes from a number of different angles, such as Physiology, Conservation, Ecology, Biogeography and Evolution.