A Mossy Bath Rug

A friend sent me this link to a bath mat made of moss. They don't specify what types of mosses they are using, but it looks to be Hypnum or maybe Thuidium. It would make for a pretty interesting bathroom experiment. Mosses do not require too much light and they love high humidity levels, thus the bathroom sounds like the perfect place.

I do wonder where they are getting the mosses. Wild collected, from a local landscaper, or are they growing them for this particular project?  

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!

Botanical Images

For the past five years, the Botanical Society of America has sponsored a image competition to fund student travel to the annual conference. It is called the TRIARCH "Botanical Images" Student Travel Award. Out of the 83 images submitted this year, three of the images featured mosses. They are the following images:

#19 showing a mixture of small organisms including mosses, lichens and green algae.

#25 showing a bright yellow slime mold climbing the sporophytes of Dicranum flagellare.

#26 showing a cluster of antheridia in Rhizomnium punctatum.

I really love #25! The title of the image is "Ever Higher" and it is just a great description for thinking of the slime mold climbing the saprophyte stalk. I also think that the color contrast is great between the green sporophyte and the yellow slime mold. 

Botanical Society of America Awards

I am happy to report that the bryology research from the Goffinet Laboratory was well received at the Botanical Society of America annual meeting this week!  My labmate Juan Carlos Villarreal recieved the A. J. Sharp Award for the best student paper presented in the Bryology and Lichenology Section. Also I was honored with the Katherine Esau Award for the best student paper in the Developmental and Structural Botany Section.

Thanks to all my great colleagues (EEB Grads, Jones Labmates & Goffinet Labmates) who helped me get my talk ready for the national meeting. I totally appreciate all the help and support!

Berry Go Round #30

The latest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at Brainripples. I was off in Providence, Rhode Island this week attending the Botanical Society of America annual conference. Today I am back in the office but I am in need of some decompression before diving back into my research, so I think that I will spend the day enjoying the Berry Go Round carnival and will get back to work full-tilt tomorrow. I listened to some great presentations and heard about a lot of cool research. A good portion of it was bryology related and I will look through my notes over the next couple of days to find some fun stories to share here on the blog. 

For more about blog carnivals and my posts about the earlier editions of Berry Go Round, click here.

The Moss Videos of the Moment

Apologies, the blog took a bit of a summer vacation while I focused on writing up the first chapter of my PhD dissertation. It reminded me of the hiatus the Puzzler takes on the NPR program Car Talk. It may be a slow transition back to posting often, but I am going to start by shooting for once a week.

The latest news in the moss world has been the publication of an article in Science magazine on the explosive vortex caused by Sphagnum capsules opening. It is the same opening mechanism that I discussed in a post back in April. 

You can link here to the full article Whitaker DL & J Edwards. 2010. Sphagnum Moss Disperses Spores with Vortex Rings. Science 329:406. And here for the four amazing high speed videos that are posted online. 

If you prefer to listen to the news, you can hear more about this study on the Science Magazine Podcast for 23 July 2010. The piece on Sphagnum runs from 12:52 to 20:50 in this episode.

You can tell it is the talk of the town, because all sorts of outlets have been posting about it. They feature it over here at the International Association of Bryologists blog and at Wired Science and on Discover Magazine and the New York Times and at ScienceNews, so you get the idea. This is the hot moss story of the moment. So if you have yet to hear the full story and see the great videos check out some of the links above. 

Berry Go Round #29

The latest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at the Agricultural Biodiversity Weblog. Enjoy the plants of summer!   

For more about blog carnivals and my posts about the earlier editions of Berry Go Round, click here.

Moss Workshop and Walk

The announcement is up for my next moss walk this summer through the Connecticut Botanical Society. The details are listed below or you can check out the information here on their website.  Moss Workshop and Walk - July 24, 2010 (Saturday 1:00 to 4:00 p.m.)
Hiding beneath your feet are an array of bright green plants, just waiting to be discovered. Come explore the trails and lake-shore of the James L. Goodwin State Forest in Hampton, Connecticut with Jessica Budke, a PhD student studying mosses at the University of Connecticut. After a brief indoor introduction we will head outside to identify and experience a diversity of mosses that are common in Connecticut forests. Participants should wear sturdy shoes and dress for the weather.  (Update  2 July 2010 - The Workshop is currently full. If you would like to be placed on the wait list feel free to contact me.)
Registration:	This workshop is open to the public and is limited to 14 people. Call or email Jessica Budke (jessica.budke@uconn.edu) to register - (860) 486-6306. Directions will be sent to registrants.

Berry Go Round #28

The latest edition of the plant carnival Berry Go Round has been posted at Greg Laden's blog. This month there is a lot of interesting items to read about non-mossy-plants. Enjoy!   

For more about blog carnivals and my posts about the earlier editions of Berry Go Round, click here.

Hornworts, A Separate Group?

A few weeks back (My Bryology Bookshelf III) I had a question about when hornworts were moved from being recognized as a type of liverwort to their own independent lineage. I put this question to my lab-mate Juan Carlos and he came up with this response.

Since the flat thalloid gametophyte looks quite similar between hornworts and some liverworts, they were thought to be to be a type of liverwort. They were definitely thought to be unique due to their sporophyte. Hornwort sporophytes grow from the base and open by two longitudinal slits that start from the top and move toward the bottom. The spores line the entire length of the interior of the sporophyte. Whereas liverwort sporophytes consist of a spore filled capsule atop a thin translucent stalk.

One of the first researchers to publicly recognize the hornworts as their own phylum (Anthocerotophyta) was Rothmaler in 1951. So there's the answer to my question. When were hornworts recognized as a separate lineage?

For more information on hornwort classification check out this scientific article.

Raymond E. Stotler and Barbara Crandall-Stotler. 2005. A Revised Classification of the Anthocerotophyta and a Checklist of the Hornworts of North America, North of Mexico. The Bryologist 108:16-26.

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.