Tag: LiverwortPage 2 of 2

The complex thalloid liverwort Aitchisoniella, and its place in the tree of life

The genus Aitchisoniella contains a single species, A. himalayensis, which was described by Pakistani botanist Professor Shiv Ram Kashyap from plants that he collected in Mussoorie, Uttarakhand, India…

The Aneura Working Group meeting, Trondheim, 8th-12th February 2016

Sitting in Edinburgh airport on a Monday morning, waiting for David Long to join me, checked in through to Trondheim via Copenhagen, I felt completely unprepared. The previous week…

There’s more to Marchantia than there used to be! An introduction to the new additions

One of the most recognisable groups in the bryophytes, the complex thalloid liverwort genus Marchantia, has just become a bit larger. We have sunk Preissia and Bucegia into…

A mixed message on PCR additives in Aneura

This last week I’ve actually managed to spend a bit of time in the lab, trying to get some gaps filled in a DNA barcoding matrix for simple…

Rates of change in liverwort genes

Although the exact relationships between the earliest land plant lineages are not yet well resolved, there is consensus that liverworts are one of the most ancient land plant…

Scientific progress, continental drift and glaciers: The history of a paper on the complex thalloid liverworts

Rather a while ago, back in 2003, we started working on a phylogeny of the complex thalloid liverworts at the Royal Botanic Garden Edinburgh (as a Molecular Phylogenetics…

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…

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…

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,…

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…