Tag: BryophytePage 3 of 3

Finding Monocarpus, in the field

Sadly, although not surprisingly, I was not able to amplify the regions of Monocarpus DNA needed to compare it to other complex thalloid liverworts from a 1950s collection that we had…

Where the Tropics meet the Arctic – Scotland

Some of the most remote and beautiful wilderness landscapes in Scotland are in the extreme north-west, in Sutherland, so-called from the Vikings who regarded it as the south…

Finding Monocarpus, in the herbarium

At the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh we’ve been working on the phylogeny of the complex thalloid liverworts for rather a while now. David Long presented a poster on…

On Monocarpus

As far as liverworts go, Monocarpus is a rather strange plant. It’s very small, in itself not that unusual for a bryophyte, but rather problematic if you need…

Biology, genomics and evolution of the complex thalloids

Twenty-five participants from 13 countries have just attended a symposium on complex thalloid liverworts in Edinburgh #Marchantia2015. The meeting also included two teleconferences (from Australia, John Bowman, Monash…

The magnificent axillary hairs of Leptobryum wilsonii

What sorts of features provide the best clues about whether or not two plants are closely related? Sometimes it’s obvious – most people can correctly recognise a daffodil…

RBGE Complex Thalloid Liverwort Symposium, July 14th-15th 2015

The complex thalloid liverworts, or Marchantiopsida, are one of the oldest land plant lineages, and contain a bewildering array of morphologies, ranging from comparatively simple plants like Blasia,…

New plant for Midlothian found in Botanics

Discovery of a plant previously unknown in an area is not what you might expect to happen within a botanic garden. Such places have large managed collections of…

Adapting to climate change

In May, Scotland published its first Scottish Climate Change Adaptation Programme –  a set of actions to increase Scotland’s resilience to the impacts of a changing climate. RBGE…

Biodiversity implications of potentially cryptic species: Using the simple thalloid liverwort Aneura as a model

We are hosting a small two-day workshop at the Royal Botanic Garden, Edinburgh on the 11th-12th September 2014 to discuss issues around morphologically cryptic species, whether we can…

More on the importance of bryophytes

As a follow-on to my post about why bryophytes are important is this thoughtful piece by Dr Janice Glime, author of the comprehensive and freely downloadable book Bryophyte…

Why bryophytes matter

As someone who has used taxpayers’ money to fund research on bryophytes (the collective term for mosses, liverworts and hornworts), ‘But why do bryophytes actually matter?’ is one…