Happy to write that there are 367 plant descriptions completed as of Tuesday, April 1st. Started to work on the lichens which I expect to be challenging, mostly because of the restrictions on technical language. I haven't thought of an appropriate description of isidia yet, maybe columnar reproductive bodies?I'd probably get a few giggles out of that description, which wouldn't necessarily be a bad thing particularly since the text is somewhat dry. I've since moved on to trees and shrubs in the interest of making some forward progress.
Did get to visit Indian river a couple of times this week. There were several skunk cabbage flowers up, each about 6-8 inches tall, but not yet open. No salmonberrry flowers or Coptis asplenifolia blooming.
Collected several bryophytes and a pin lichen in my travels. Found a particularly large Bazzania which prompted reviewing the characteristics of the local species. This large Bazzania didn't have any deciduous leaves that would have immediately identified it as denudata, nor did it have the leaf characteristics of the other two common species, but wasn't large enough to be B. trilobata.
Laid out the Bazzania species side by side on a slide so that I could do some comparison.
Bazzania trilobata is much larger than the other species that I have available, but the difference wasn't as extreme as I expected. Particularly between the newly collected species and B. trilobata. What was apparent was that the leaves of trilobata overlap the stem more than those do of the unknown. There isn't as much overlap as in B. tricreanata or as what is described for pearsonii. The unknown Bazzania is much flatter than are the other species. Both trilobata and the unknown species have multiple slender stems from the underside and fairly regularly 3 toothed leaf tips.
At the moment I'll use the following characteristics to identify Bazzania species.
B. trilobata: size of stems (6mm wide), leaves somewhat overlapping, 3 toothed apex, ventral flagella present
B. denudata: stems to 2mm wide, 3 toothed truncate apex, ventral flagella, leaves deciduous
B. tricrenata: stems usually less than 2mm, leaves mostly overlapping on dorsal surface of stem, acute apex with 1-3 teeth, underleaves wider than long, with 3-4 lobes
B. personii: stems to 1.5 mm, leaves strongly overlapping on dorsal surface, leaf tips acute, underleaves longer than wide, less lobed than in B. tricrenata
I'm leaning toward calling the unknown Bazzania denudata despite the lack of naked stems.
The pin lichen seems to be Chaenotheca brunneola.
One of the other liverwort questions that surfaced this week concerned Herbertus. There seems to be 2 species in our area, H. aduncus and H. dicranus. I have to admit that I hadn't much thought about there being 2 species, so I haven't been paying much attention to which is where or for that matter how to tell them apart. One key feature seems to be whether the leaves are falcate or not (H. aduncus is falcate, H. dicranus is not). The collections I have from the class I took from Schofield look very different in growth form. H. dicranus is much larger, it looks a bit more like twine. Unfortunately after reading the species descriptions, I'm not sure if size differences can be relied upon.
Misc. notes:
salmonberries blooming near Galankin dock.
One streptopus amplexifolius popping up on Sunday 4/6trimmed rugosa roses on 4/5
planted seeds of Thalictricum dekvayi var decorum, Aconitum sp. (climbing) and Cremanthodium that Les Brake sent from Wasilla on 4/6. I put the flats in the greenhouse, hopeful for some cool weather to chill the seeds.
4 marbled murrelets on Saturday. Humpback right in front of the house .
about 50 redpolls working the ground near UAS in the grass by the row of pine by the waterfront 4/4?.
Hummingbirds have arrived in town (Harris Island), not seen on Galankin yet.
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