The sky was fierce this morning and so was the wind. The firebrand sky paled into a variety of pale greys quite quickly but the wind has been thrashing everything all day. Its buffeting, and probably a hangover from yesterday's spiraea root pulling made my chest hurt, so I decided that, apart from a couple of short expeditions to collect moss samples, I'd stay indoors today. Most of it has been spent peering into the microscope determining a moss species and being fascinated by the sporophytes of Pale Liverwort, which I found among the Mammillate Plait Moss on the trunk of a holly tree. I'd actually gone to the holly tree to check out some small fungi.
The silvery thread in the pic on the right made me look more closely where I saw more of those.
And while I was looking closely through the microscope lens, one of the sporophyte capsules released its spores onto the petri dish. Click pics to enlarge if you like. It was fascinating.
Before these exciting events I had been up the garden for a fresh sample of the moss growing low on the old spiraea stems, and I determined that it is Waved Silk Moss (Plagiothecium undulatum).
The undulated leaves, which stay wavy when dry, are evident here.
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| Waved Silk Moss/Plagiothecium undulatum |
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