Tag: BryologyPage 1 of 4

A Deeper Look at Tree Mosses; Part III

The following blog posts on moss evolution are written by Diego Sánchez-Ganfornina (early career researcher).Migrations, extinctions, rainforests and climate change: the pressures and situations that led tree mosses…

A Deeper Look at Tree Mosses; Part II

The following blog posts on moss evolution are written by Diego Sánchez-Ganfornina (early career researcher).Migrations, extinctions, rainforests and climate change: the pressures and situations that led tree mosses…

A Deeper Look at Tree Mosses; Part I

The following blog posts on moss evolution are written by Diego Sánchez-Ganfornina (early career researcher).Migrations, extinctions, rainforests and climate change: the pressures and situations that led tree mosses…

Redefining Aneura maxima and other Pellia-like Aneura

It seems that not only are the North American Aneura sharpii, the east Asian Aneura pellioides and the south-east Asian Aneura maxima all distinct species, but there are also two Pellia-like Aneura species in Europe.

Tidying up in Aneura

We have chosen a lectoype for Riccardia fuscovirens Lindb. (i.e., a type specimen that is chosen after a name has been published, but from the original specimens or illustrations that the author of the name would have been influenced by when they were first recognizing the taxon)

Lindenberg’s Featherwort – liverwort child of the Atlantic

Geography, and particularly climate, have distinguished the extreme western parts of Scotland from the rest of the country for thousands of years. Many of our rarest plant species…

DNA sequence variation within the common urban moss Grimmia pulvinata

Even with a plant as common, and as commonly overlooked, as this pollution-tolerant urban bryophyte, there is still genetic diversity to explore and explain.

The hidden distinctiveness of a threatened British moss

When conservation scientists are trying to decide which species are most in need of protection, the main consideration is usually how likely they are to become extinct, as…

Polytrichum baits: Cutting mosses

We started our lab work on the Polytrichum hybrid baits project on the 1st of October, by normalising some CTAB-extracted DNA with 0.1X TE to 55 µL of…

Generating a phylogeny of Polytrichum using hybrid baits

The current Next Gen Sequencing lab project at the Botanics involves looking at the phylogeny of Polytrichum section Polytrichum, using hybrid capture. Polytrichum commune, photographed by David Bell…

How much liverwort do you need to get 50 μg of DNA?

There’s an exciting project, The 10KP (10,000 Plants) Genome Sequencing Project, that aims to sequence and characterize representative genomes from every major clade of embryophytes, green algae, and…

Untangling asetate Weissia species in the UK

Dr Des Callaghan spends rather a lot of his time chasing after rare things. He’s an environmental consultant with many strings to his bow, but a particular specialisation…

A violet for Walt

The Shawnee National Forest skirts the midwestern town of Carbondale, which is home to one of the campuses of Southern Illinois University. It’s also one of the prettiest…

A visit to the Californian type locality for the hornwort Phaeoceros proskaueri

One of North America’s endemic hornworts, Phaeoceros proskaueri Stotler, Crand.-Stotl. & W.T.Doyle [also known as Paraphymatoceros proskaueri (Stotler, Crand.-Stotl. & W.T.Doyle) J.C.Villarreal & Cargill] was described from plants collected in the Monterey Bay…

Complex thalloid Asterella lateralis from Panama’s Volcano

During a family holiday to Santiago, Panama in June/July 2011, we snuck in a short bryologising trip, first heading west along the Pan-American Highway, then north, to the…

Snowbird, Utah – Marchantia (Preissia) quadrata from the Rockies

The Botany 2004 meeting was in Snowbird, Utah – a chance to see a different part of the United States (and, of course, to present our research to…

Gyrothyra underwoodiana from Vancouver Island

In April 2004, I flew north from Illinois to met up with a botanical friend, Dr Zoe Badcock. Our meeting point was Vancouver, British Columbia; from there we…

The plants of our lives

There’s something quite melancholy about going back through all the little paper packets of voucher specimens, remembering who and where you were when you collected them, and thinking…

Bryological holiday jobs

The Science building at the Botanics closes down between Christmas and New Year, so any last bits of work for the year have to be packed up and…

Notes on the complex thalloid liverwort genus Plagiochasma

Now that we have six wild-collected accessions of Plagiochasma currently growing on public display in the RBGE Arid House, from China, the US (Texas) and Saudi Arabia, I’ve…