The Lophocolea Stump

I've posted before (here, here, and here, the last one just now on 27Feb16) about the old spruce stump whose top is covered in the liverwort Lophocolea heterophylla (Variable-leaved Crestwort). Recently I noticed signs new activity on the stump.

The mat of Crestwort is quite thick now–it has been growing for a few years–but some dark patches appeared, and a small, darker green spot.

When I went to investigate, it appeared that something (a bird, looking for food, perhaps?) had pulled up some of the liverwort and dropped the pieces. There were also some bits of rotten wood. These break of at the edges very easily now.

The darker green spot is a different bryophyte, a moss I haven't identified yet, but which, on closer inspection revealed reflexed hair points at their tips.






There are other mosses, lichens, and sometimes slime moulds on the stump as new life grows on and around it and recycles its resources. Years ago, when it was just a bare stump, I wrapped a piece of hose around it. That's still there and part of the scenery. I've been reluctant to pull it off, not least because I'll have to find somewhere else to put it, but maybe I should before the spring growth of the grasses, heath bedstraw, ferns and rushes!

a frosted Polytrichum

Been trying a new way of loading photos. Hmm...

Winter garden

Pic taken 4 August 2014

I'm working my way through the green pile at the back. The logs have been split and stored in a woodshed. I'm shredding the green stuff and piling the long branches up against the stone wall you might be able to make out beyond the piles.

So... I did today's stint of that, wearing a dust mask over my mouth and nose because if I breathe in too much of the sappy wood fumes I get a headache.

Then I went for a garden wander to see where things were at.

 The first few daffodil and snowdrop shoots are poking through

but it is really the mosses and liverworts that brighten up a winter garden, like this Variable-leaved Crestwort (Lophocolea heterophylla) on an old spruce stump

and this Neat Feather Moss (Pseudoscleropodium purum) which covers large areas of our north-east and north-west facing banks. Below is a small area under a downy birch tree.

Most of the ferns have 'gone over' for the winter, though new little ones are appearing everywhere. I like the way our large Hard Fern shows the deciduous fertile fronds in brown and the evergreen sterile ones at the same time.

Then I started looking at mosses on the dry stone wall at the top of the bank. In the middle is Rusty Swan-neck Moss (Campylopus flexuosus). More about its rustiness in another post. Behind it and in front of it is Cypress-leaved Plait-moss (Hypnum cupressiforme), and either side of the Rusty Swan-neck moss are shoots of the succulent Reflexed Stonecrop.

Chocolate puddings and ferns

After some chores I sat down on a pallet with a pot of chocolate Gü and a mug of tea.

I'm testing chocolate puddings for when my grandsons visit. Their other grandparents down in England supply Mini Magnums so I decided to be the supplier of chocolate puds. I make a fabulous mocha upsidedown sponge pud but sometimes one needs something that comes in a little pot which is best eaten with a baby's little horn spoon.

I'm giving the Gü thing five out of ten so I won't be buying it again. I had to read what it said on the box after eating it to know what it was supposed to taste of––other than chocolate of course. Not impressed with what they call "our richest ganache yet" and I'm a bit of a ganache expert.

Anyway, moving on...

I looked at the next task while I had my snackeroo: this wall of ferns

I wanted to clear the larger ferns back to the wall before they shot their spores everywhere. We have plenty of ferns and though I like them I feel I do have to limit them a bit or they'd smother everything else. I also wanted to check out what else is growing on this damp holding wall. Some people actually plant vertical walls with stuff. Nature just does it herself at the Boggy Brae.

Here is a small section with

Athyrium filix-femina (Lady Fern)

Phyllitis scolopendrium (Hart's-tongue Fern)

Asplenium trichomanes (Maidenhair Spleenwort).

The tiny white flowers are Enchanter's Nightshade. I think it is Alpine Enchanter's Nightshade because the leaf bases are heart-shaped rather than truncate.

And then there are mosses and liverworts growing on the actual stones

plus a few other things

The main liverwort is Crescent-cup Liverwort (Lunularia cruciata) on this section of wall.

You can see one of the crescent cups with 'gemmae' in it near the bottom centre of this pic.

 Same liverwort with female 'receptacles' (those pointy dot things)

and a red-stemmed moss that I'm not sure about yet.

I found a tiny purple grub during my pokings and peerings;

took this shot under the microscope and then put it back where it was.

It was about 15mm long.

 That bit of wall looks like this now.

I stopped at this bunch of ferns because there is a wasps' nest in the wall behind them. The wasps haven't been a bother so we have left them alone.

Starting with a petri dish

Starting with petri dish and a scrap or two of stuff scraped off a wall, I began my microscopic peerings. In the dish above is a piece of straight grass stem for scale. It is 1mm wide. There are a few grass spikelets kicking about in that dish too.

In one of those scraps of what I think is a plait moss, possibly Cypress-leaved Plait-moss (Hypnum cupressiforme), or possibly Hypnum andoi – I need to see a young capsule to be sure which one, and there weren't any at the moment – I found two liverworts and two other even tinier mosses. I've identified the liverworts. One I have found before at the base of Boggy Brae wild cherry tree last year. It is Bifid Crestwort (Lophocolea bidenta). The two teeth referred to in its name are easy to see in the following three pics:

Bifid Crestwort (Lophocolea bidenta) (1)

On the right: Bifid Crestwort (Lophocolea bidenta) (2)

Bifid Crestwort (Lophocolea bidenta) (3)

The liverwort new to me is Forked Veilwort (Metzgeria furcata) and it looks like this:

Forked Veilwort (Metzgeria furcata) 1

Showing the clear forking of
Forked Veilwort (Metzgeria furcata) 2

Forked Veilwort (Metzgeria furcata) 3

You can see in the third of those pics how the length of the veilwort leaves (or thalluses as they are more properly called) would catch my attention next to the moss leaves underneath.

Here are a couple of pics of one of the very tiny mosses. I don't know its name yet.

I added a blob of water to the petri dish overnight and had great fun playing with microscopic images of water surface tension the next day. Separate post for that here.

And what else is the garden doing in late April?

Pignut (Conopodium majus) is beginning to flower

Next door's ornamental cherry is in blossom and hanging over into our garden

Spears of Pyramidal Bugle (Ajuga pyramidalis) are shooting up

Ajuga pyramidalis from above

Liverwort and moss growing together on an old tile under one of the companionway steps.
I think the liverwort is Pellia epiphylla (dead common round here) and the moss is, I think, Common Feather-moss (Kindbergia praelonga/Eurynthium praelongum)

 Lady's Mantle catching raindrops

Here the gardener is attempting to be arty with violets.

She is not sure she has succeeded, but the colour is nice.

 Wood sorrel beginning to flower on the north-east facing front garden wall

Shoots of Solomon's Seal in front of a rotting trunk in the lane

The weight of ivy and winter gales brought the top half of the old trunk down

which benefited the roe deer as they could eat the youngest ivy leaves

Herb Bennet (Geum urbanum) leaves

Herb Robert (Geranium purpureum) leaves

and Hawthorn almost ready to flower

The weight of ivy also weighed down that hawthorn tree but it is still thriving

even bent right over to the ground

A mass of tree trunks and ivy trunks

And lastly, for now, the fallen wild cherry is still flowering away, though when the wind picks up we have cherry petal snow

Thus

You can see in that picture, if you enlarge it by clicking on it, just how much of our upper lawn is pignut.