wweellll's Favorites

Attempt at drawing a photograph-based liverwort life cycle. Missing spore germination into protonema and development of gametophyte. Cluttered. Spore images (from different species) taken from Wikipedia (https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Porella_platyphylla_%28d,_144628-474752%29_8662.JPG by Hermann Schachner). On alder.

Young female Western Gray Squirrel raiding one of our backyard bird feeding locations. Actually, that is OK by us as there are way more introduced Fox Squirrels than native Gray Squirrels in our backyard these days.

Gametophytes, previously reported from this stump. Far smaller than I realized!

Step 1: Consult the iNat app from Port Alberni to confirm the location in a last-second plan before driving to Kennedy Lake.
Step 2: Walk the access road, find a small trail in the right area, and walk until my location dot on the iNat map matches the middle of the cluster of sightings.
Step 3: Spend at least 10 minutes searching the nearby forest for a stump matching the ones in the photos.
Step 4: After finding the right stump, spend another solid 10 minutes in miniature world searching the stump for the ferns, including going back to the photos several times for every clue I could find!

I thought I was looking for something larger, but the biggest ones were only about 2mm in size. Even more fun than Botrychium searches ;-) And I must say, I only saw them through the iPhone lens/screen, as they were too small to really see unassisted.

Now that I've seen them once (with all this tech help), hopefully I can find more!

Gametophytes (no sporophytes seen), uncommon within deeply shaded vertical crevices, conifer stumps (Picea sitchensis, Thuja plicata), 1 m above ground, W aspects, few associated bryophytes or lichens. Scale bar 1 mm.

Sticta gretae sp. nov. Goward & Di Meglio 2023

Di Meglio, J. R., & Goward, T. (2023). Resolving the Sticta fuliginosa Morphodeme (Lichenized Ascomycota: Peltigeraceae) in Northwestern North America. The Bryologist, 126(1), 90-110.

I was absolutely ecstatic to have even seen a pacific jumping mouse but was even more shocked when it allowed me to take photos on my phone up close for a few minutes as it fed. This individual still had awareness but didn’t seem super bothered by my presence. I’ve been wanting to observe this species for a while and I’m so happy to have gotten this experience.

Edit: Saw a different individual in the same spot today (9/27/23, 1:20 PM). Glad to see population activity.