Ημερολόγιο της/του rambryum

Incapable of falling asleep the other night, I pulled out one of those rummage sale books that I had never really spent time with. Gilbert Smith's Cryptogamic Botany Volume II: Bryophytes & Peteridophytes. This would have been a standard university botany textbook in the post-WWII era, with careful attention given to anatomy and architecture at a time when the genetic underpinnings of plant diversity and development were not so easily studied. Without cladograms or codons, the book focuses heavily on apical cells and the development of reproductive bits for hints to the origins of the diverse groups that if covers. One of the riveting upsides of this was a very cohesive contemplation of the liverwort order Sphaerocarpales (remarkably conserved in the 75+ years since original publication). Like Cycads, Ginkgos, Spike Mosses, Ephedra and other anomalous groups, balloonworts just stick out as different from other plants. The curiousity was enough that Smith in the 1940s and 1950s was summarizing careful (and numerous!) developmental studies of Sphaerocarpos from as far back as the early 1800s.

Despite my own fixation with these bubbly little liverworts, I didn't really understand what was going on in the bubbles. In the photos below you can see clusters of both "large" bubbles (about 1mm tall) and "small" bubbles (<.5mm tall). Bigger bubbles belong to the female plants, with each bubble enclosing a single archegonium. In kind, the smaller bubbles of the male plants enclose a single antheridium. When the antheridium mature and rupture, the flagellate sperm rest motionless in a liquid generated within said antheridium. It is only when this liquid oozes out and make contact with rain or surface water that the sperm begin to swim. Fascinating. This was all likely happening today in the photos I took of Sphaerocarpos texanus. You can see these little bubbles oozing and mixing with water, allowing for the motile gametes to seek out nearby eggs. This particular population is fertile, with sporophytes having been observed in previous years.

This is all a long winded way to say that despite the bleak weather in the pacific northwest of late, Balloonwort Season is upon us. This map shows general areas of the PNW where it has been observed in the iNaturalist system. @bstarzomski is the real ferret for this group and we have decided that on the coast, it seems to like seasonally saturated to marginally moist fine, silty-sandy and frequently disturbed sediments near the ocean. The local populations I watch are (1) adjacent to a playground on kid-tattered grassless patches in what was intented to be a lawn and (2) in a seasonal campground that is loaded with RVs in the the summer. The thing is just so incredibly small and ephemeral that it is easy to miss, but I suspect concerted efforts would turn it up in other regions and fill in the intersticies of that map.

If anyone reading this is near any of the following spots and willing to get down on your hands and knees, I think the following spots could be productive at this time of year:

Vancouver
Kits/Jericho Beach areas, especially around here
Cates Park in West Vancouver (large lawny area around the playground)
Fraser River Park
Burnaby Fraser Foreshore Park

Victoria
see @bstarzomski 's many observations here

Nanaimo
Neck Point Park

Ladysmith
Transfer Beach Park (grass by the playground and picnic tables next to shore)

Port Alberni
Canal Waterfront Park

Anacortes
Green Point at Washington Park

@rolandwirth mentioned that he finds it helpful to know what to photograph for different groups of bryophytes in order to increase the likelihood of a species ID. I have made a posts about how to shoot liverworts for ID borne out of trying to ID other people's observations and wishing that photos might show particularly helpful features.

Any bryophyte observation is going to benefit from
(1) a habitat shot (showing substrate and associated bryophytes)
(2) a detailed habit shot of the bryophyte showing its general growth form (upright, scrambling, long leaves, hair points, distribution and form of sporophytes if present)
(3) a detail of the leaf
(4) a detail of the sporophyte (if possible).

While it is generally true that these small plants often need a microscope to make confident species IDs, some of them do have field characters that allow for a reasonably confident species ID from photographs. However, the characters required to photograph vary from group to group. In that spirit I thought I would try to write an overview of how to photograph various families of bryophytes by starting with the most tedious, nebulous, cursed and infuriating families of them all: Bryaceae. This group of mosses is one I come back to like a cryptic crossword, as if wanting to add irritation to my life. But it is also one of the most speciose groups in Western North America. If you are looking for a technical starting point, John Spence's somewhat informal Guide to the Identification of Bryaceae would be a good place to start, while his more technical treatment in Flora of North America is best for those armed with a microscope.

Here is what I have come to learn about accessible and useful photography over 5 years of trying to figure this family out.

(1) Asexual propagules. Look for little bud balls in the upper leaves (eg. Gemmabryum dichotomum, Bryum barnesii) or little red micropotatoes (eg. Bryum radiculosum) in the soil. The presence, shape, colour and number of these is a useful and photographable character,
(2) Leaf arrangement. Are the leaves evenly distributed and spaced along the stem (eg. Ptychostomum pseudotriquetrum) while others form rosettes (eg. Bryum capillaire) or grow in clusters along the stem (Bryum canariense)
(3) Leaf attachement-- Are the leave attached along a horizontal line or do they drape down the stem ("decurrent", as in Ptychostomum weigelii)
(4) Colour -- this is something that you can't help but catch. Things like Bryum miniatum and Bryum pallens can be rich shades of pink and red.
(5) Leaf apices -- hold the plant up to the sky so as to catch transmitted light through the leaf. Is the apex round? Is there a hairpoint (as in Bryum capillaire)? Is it made up of clear, non-photosynthetic cells (as in Bryum argenteum)?
(6) Leaf margin -- again hold up to the sky and let transmitted light through the leaf en route to your lens. Are there teeth? Does the margin have elongated cells? You can capture these at higher magnification or through a hand-lens+cell phone combo.
(7) Capsules- Honestly these are hit and miss, but if present you can try to photograph the # of sporophytes emerging from each shoot apex, as that varies within the family and sometimes within genera. The orientation of the capsules (whether pendulous or horizontal) can also be useful.

In the words of @johndreynolds "take the shot" if you a have it. If you have other things to add to this, throw it in the comments and I can try and update and incorporate.