Sunday, February 19, 2012

Liverworts

I'm done IDing everything from my last hike and I got some surprises.  I did not find any Marchantia, what I thought was Marchantia keyed out as Pellia neesiana.

Pellia neesiana female plant

Cross section

84um cells

Pellia neesiana male plant
Pellia neesiana
I also found Apometzgeria pubescens, it keyed out to Metzgeria but I was not completely satisfied with that because it was too hairy.  It had hair over all of the dorsal surface, not just on the margin and the midrib.  Some more researching in a different book took me to the slightly controversial genus ApometzgeriaApometzgeria has only one species and it fits this liverwort quite well.

Apometzgeria pubescens

Apometzgeria pubescens

Apometzgeria pubescens


Apometzgeria pubescens thallus cross section

I also found Scapania undulata:

Scapania undulata

Scapania undulata
Dorsal and ventral lobe still attached (I was lucky!) Scapania undulata

Teeth on the ventral lobe Scapania undulata

1000 times magnification of oil bodies in cells Scapania undulata
 I also found Lepidozia reptans , I found it before in my petri dish, but this time I found it in the wild. 
Lepidozia reptans

Lepidozia reptans
Lastly, when I got home I found an unlobed liverwort in my petri dish.  I think I have found this same liverwort twice now.  I don't know what it is.  It might need reproductive parts for me to ID it.  I had fun taking pictures of it anyway.  I shined light down onto my compound scope so I could get a better picture of this:


1 comment:

Dr. Lalita Calabria said...

Love this post! Especially your Scapania and Apometgerzia photos.