November 2013 Desktop Calendar

Another lovely moss from our summer hike up Mt. Monadnock in New Hampshire. This is the moss Polytrichum commune. Its common name is the hairy-capped moss, named so for its hairy calyptra. Calyptra are the little caps of maternal gametophyte tissue that cover the top of the young offspring sporophytes. These caps prevent water loss from the apex of the developing plant. Think of it as your mother sending you out the door to play with a fuzzy little cap atop your head. However, this cap is meant to keep your wet hair from drying out rather than to keep out the cold. I like to think of it as a reverse shower cap. A little odd to imagine the human equivalent, but it works well by keeping the top of the mosses moist in the dry air. For more on calyptra, check out this summary about my PhD research studying calyptrae. Happy November!

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.

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.

Have you heard of Bogology?

Have you heard of Bogology? Probably not, because I think it is a bit of a newly invented term. Bogology is the study and science of peatlands. I just heard about this new website and blog by researchers from the United Kingdom who are studying peatlands. If you are interested in peat bogs and Sphagnum mosses, the information and discussions they have will be right up your alley.

Thanks to Dr. Kaisa Kajala for making me aware of this site!

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.

Mosses in the Garden

Thinking about integrating some mosses into your garden or landscaping? Have a shady spot that could use a bit of green? Gardening with mosses may be in your future...

Kathy Connolly has written an article on just this topic for The Day newspaper out of New London, CT. I am quoted throughout the article for some tips and moss biology info. Check out the full text for free on their website.

My favorite quote from the article. 

"If you put a philodendron through a blender," says Budke, "you have a dead philodendron. But with moss, each living cell is capable of growing a whole new plant. That's why the blender works." 

This the backyard of the house where I used to live in Connecticut.
Others might call it the 'frog pond' or 'herpetology pool'.
I always thought of it as the "moss pond".

That is just one amazing fun fact about mosses! Each live cell is totipotent. Meaning that each can regrow an entirely new plant and be any type of cell. Similar to stem cells in animals that can be used to grow many different types of organs.

Overall it was a fun interview to give and I think the article came out very well! Informative, interesting, and all about mosses!

October 2013 Desktop Calendar

Pictured here are a few mosses in yellow-green that are surrounded by some complex thalloid liverworts for your October desktop. These are from our hike to the Stebbins Cold Canyon Reserve this past spring. The weather is finally starting to cool down here in the central valley and I am hoping that we will get out for a few more hikes while the weather is lovely and comfortable. Happy botanizing!

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.

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.

Two Structures, One Set of Genes

When presented with a problem it is typically easier to solve it with tools at your disposal rather than inventing something new. This is also the case for plants and animals. When presented with a developmental or evolutionary challenge, it is often easier for them to use genes that already exist in their genetic toolkit to respond to the challenge.

Rhizoids are thin filaments of cells that anchor leafy moss plants onto their growth surface, which can be soil, rock, or trees, just to name a few. Rhizoids also function in water uptake. They help by creating many capillary spaces in which water can be move from the soil to the plant. However, rhizoids are not the only structures that are able to take up water in mosses. The leafy gametophyte plants can absorb water through many parts of their body including leaves and stems. 

The water uptake structures that you are probably more familiar with are roots. They are underground organs that function in water uptake and anchor the sporophytes of vascular plants into the soil. Near the tips of each root there are elongated, filamentous cells (root hairs) that increase the surface area through which the roots can take in water. 

Though root hairs and rhizoids have similar functions and they both start with the letter 'R', these two structures have completely independent evolutionary origins. By that I mean that root hairs are not rhizoids that have been changed and modified over evolutionary time. Another piece of evidence that points to them being evolutionary independent is that rhizoids are only present on the gametophytes, whereas root hairs are only on the sporophytes. Having structures that are exclusive to opposite generations typically indicates that have evolved independently. 

So, root hairs and rhizoids have similar functions, structurally they are both filamentous in shape, but what about the genes that control their development. Might they be using the same or similar parts of their genetic toolkit to build these two structures? 

Scientists examined this by figuring out the genes that are important for forming the root hairs in flowering plants, then looking to see if these same genes are also important for root hairs in mosses (Menand et al 2007; Pires et al 2013). The figure below shows some of their results. Let me walk you through it. On the left are mosses will brown rhizoids growing from the base. On the right are flowering plant roots with thin root hairs sticking out of the sides. WT and Col0 are what the plants look like naturally with no changes to the genes. 

Part of Figure 4 from Menand et al 2007

They found a group of related genes in mosses and flowering plants that influence both rhizoid and root hair formation. Pprsl1, Pprsl2, and rhd6-3 are the names of three members of this group of genes. 

What we see on the left is that they knockout/turn off Pprsl1 = rhizoids still form, they knockout/turn off Pprsl2 = rhizoids still form, but when they turn both of them off  = no to only a few rhizoids form. 

On the left, center panel they turn off the gene rhd6-3 and the root does not make any root hairs. The coolest part of the study is that they are able to knock out the gene that makes root hairs, then use the moss gene to control the formation of root hairs. They are using a moss gene to control the production of root hairs in a flowering plant. Pretty wild!

This is just a small part of the story where they show that root hairs and rhizoids are controlled by the same network of genes. I think that it is a great example of plants using the genetic tools at their disposal to build similar structures on completely different parts of the plant in distantly related species. 

Check out the publications for more details about their experiments and findings. 

Menand B, Yi K, Jouannic S, Hoffmann L, Ryan E, Linstead P, Schaefer DG, &; Dolan L (2007). An ancient mechanism controls the development of cells with a rooting function in land plants. Science (New York, N.Y.), 316 (5830), 1477-80 PMID: 17556585


Pires ND, Yi K, Breuninger H, Catarino B, Menand B, &; Dolan L (2013). Recruitment and remodeling of an ancient gene regulatory network during land plant evolution. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 110 (23), 9571-6 PMID: 23690618

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  

September 2013 Desktop Calendar

This image from one of our hikes in South Tahoe last month. We started at the end of a tiny windy road that ran along Fallen Leaf Lake and hiked up to Gilmore Lake. These Polytrichum mosses were growing along the edge of the lake. They make for a very busy image. So busy that it is a little challenging to see the calendar. Hopefully your September is not nearly as busy as this photo!

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.

Mosses Winning Awards

Summer science conferences are in full swing and I am happy to report that our moss research has won some awards at two recent conferences!

Luke Busta presented our collaborative research studying cuticle waxes on mosses at the Phytochemical Society of America meeting. The cuticle is a layer of waxes and polymers that cover the surface of plants and prevents water loss. Luke is a chemistry graduate student in Dr. Reinhard Jetter's lab at the University of British Columbia. His talk, entitled "Cuticular waxes from the gametophyte, sporophyte, and calyptra of the moss Funaria hygrometrica" won the best student presentation at the meeting. This was his first national meeting and is a fabulous accomplishment!

I attended the Botanical Society of America meeting a couple of weeks back and one of my research publications from my PhD (citation below) won the Grady L. Webster award. This award is given for the "most outstanding paper published in the American Journal of Botany in the field of structural and developmental botany (i.e., anatomy and morphology) over the two-year period prior to the award year". I feel very honored receiving this award. As a scientist I publish my findings in research journals and people in my sub-field read them and then refer to/cite them in their own papers. In spite of getting the work out there for people to read, scientists rarely get direct feedback on what others think of their work. It is great to know that my scientific research is well-regarded by other botanists. 

Budke JM, Goffinet B, Jones CS. 2012. The cuticle on the gametophyte calyptra matures before the sporophyte cuticle in the moss Funaria hygrometrica (Funariaceae). AmericanJournal of Botany 99: 14-22.

Sharing these positive events here on the blog was inspired by reading this article on the Scientific American blog about academic life. One of her recommendations was to start a "feel good" email folder to remind yourself of kind words others have shared and happy successes to help you make it through tough times. These awards are headed to my "feel good" folder and I wanted to share them here too. Writing this blog has definitely had a positive influence on my professional life. It helps me stay focused on the interesting aspects of moss plant biology and allows me to share my thoughts on the latest science research on mosses. Thanks!