Pleuridium acuminatum or maybe not...

Update 25 Aug: I keep going to look at the plants to see if the setae have grown. So far they haven't and any capsules there are are still nestling between leaves. That is, unless what I'm seeing are all antheridia and there are no capsules! I don't think they are all antheridia though because the leaves are not 'open' around them. <still confused of the Boggy Brae>

~~~~~~~~~

The post from 21 Aug

I am by no means certain, but I think this moss, growing on soil near Atrichum undulatum and some other mosses, is Taper-leaved Earth-moss (Pleuridium acuminatum).

E.V.Watson says it is a small and rather inconspicuous moss. I agree with him about the size but I thought the intense green colour of the moss next to the quite different and mostly darker green Atrichum was striking. It and the 'slightly secund' (pointing in one direction) leaves is what made me notice it when I was right above it chucking stuff into my dead-hedge.

Pic to the left shows a couple of shoots of Atrichum undulatum in the top right corner.

One of the difficulties (apart from my ignorance) that presented itself while trying to identify this moss was that the books I have say different and sometimes contradictory things. With regard to leaves pointing in one direction AJE Smith in The Moss Flora of Britain and Ireland says that the leaves are more or less erect or 'slightly secund'. Watson, in British Mosses and Liverworts says that the leaves "are not curved to one side (falcato-secund)". Hmm. The Field Guide of the British Bryological Society (BBS) says the leaves are "usually erect and occasionally slightly turned to one side". I concluded that the Boggy Brae shoots, all several thousand of them, are of the occasional type.

The photo to the right shows the typical size of the shoots, which fits the BBS statement that they are often less than 1cm tall. This one does look fairly erect, possibly because it has a capsule.

capsule and perichaetal leaves 

To the right I was looking down on a capsule.
Correction 22 Aug: Seems this is an antheridium. Thanks due to Richard Lansdown for that.









In among the Earth-moss shoots were just four of another very tiny moss shown below. Its identification is for another day.