The lure of the liverwort

Super long hyaline moss hair points. On a boulder near you.

I may have told you before, but I. Really. Love. Moss. and I want you to love it too. Maybe you'll be more receptive when you hear I've recently, with virtually no strain, amassed 65 specimens. I mean it takes some effort to identify the things, obviously. But with mosses and liverworts you'll never be short of material. That has to be a good start.

Where have I found so many mosses? (I hear you ask). Well, nowhere exotic. I've been on a walk through an ancientish woodland (22), I've wandered around the campus (12), I've been on a field trip to a stream (5) and a park (13), and en route elsewhere I've squealed the car to a halt next to a lush and verdant drystone wall (9).  The secret is to look at different habitats - mine were on trees and on the earth, and on walls. So I've not even touched on grasslands or heathlands or watery places yet. Mosses aren't difficult to collect or carry, and they don't require any fancy preservation. So long as any companions don't mind you holding up proceedings every now and again, you can keep an eye out for them wherever you go.

Metzgeria liverwort

 If you like moss, you're going to love liverworts (I know you will). Look at the snakey, seaweedesque example above. It's only one cell thick! and it's a 'thallose' species, one without leaves but just a sort of branching strap shape tissue. Soo lovely. I found it down by the Frome. It was literally covering a wall and also on the tree trunks - everywhere, but too tiny for anyone to realise its structure (most would think it just looked like Green Stuff. But they don't know what they're missing).

Here's another liverwort, a leafy species this time. Look at the lovely way it's flattened and branching - and it has little 'underleaves' too (something that mosses don't run to). What's not to like? Liverworts often like soggier places than most mosses; this one was on a very damp wall.

If you're still wondering what to collect, I really do recommend this group. Make yourself some Moss Packets (see this page) and get going! If you want to see some of my specimens (and how I identified them) then you're most welcome to come to the lab - just send me an email to arrange a time.

Observations for your fungi notebook

CC image by Jomo

This is a Woolly milkcap, a specimen of which was brought in by Student G last week. Its scientific name is Lactarius torminosus. The 'lact' you may recognise from 'lactose' in milk: milk, because if you damage the gills they leak a white liquid. Look at all those fluffy fibres around the edge of the cap -  they're rather distinctive.

You'll need ways to describe all the strange features of your fungi - that means learning a few new words. There are some excellent pages in my Marcel Bon guide which show all the different shapes and textures of cap, gill, stipe, etc. and what the terminology is for them. I can email you a scan (in the spirit of increased mycological awareness, and not to deliberately deny M. Bon any money, since the book is long out of print). I have also made a useful list of notes and measurements you might want to take for your notebook, which I will turn into a little handout when I get a moment.

Today I was talking to mushroom-mad final year student P, who reminded me about the Danish website MycoKey. Looking today I see there's a free download of part of their new duo of books, the 'identification wheels' from The Fungi of Temperate Europe. They're super up to date taxonomically, include everything you could ever think of (and more), and have lovely photos that might help you get your mystery mushroom to the right group. (The books themselves are £95 so maybe something to aspire to). I recommend a look.

A strange inhabitant of the woods

This week, there was a little excursion to do some surveying in the local woods. You may have been there, and if so, you may have been delighted by these crazy, alien-looking objects:

In the centre of each one is a soft papery globe. When they were given a poke, a little cloud of spores puffed through the single pore.  So you might think 'well, it must be a puffball', but that's not quite true. This is an Earthstar and it's in the Geastraceae family, whereas Common puffballs (the sort kids like to kick on school playing fields) and Giant puffballs (that can actually be as big as footballs) are in a different family, the Lycoperdaceae.*

[Etymology corner: Ge-astra literally means 'earth - star' (think ge-ology and astr-onomy). But do you know what Lycoperdon means? It means wolf fart. Perhaps this shines a light into the mindset of mycologists, I don't know].

Eighteen species of Earthstar have allegedly been recorded in this country (though my books seem to have about half a dozen of the most common). I think our one above is the Collared earthstar (Geastrum triplex) and is distinctive with its inner saucer-like collar. Around the collar are extremely fleshy-feeling rays, where the fruiting body has split as it's opened. The picture above right shows the rays bending right back underneath (quite weirdly, like little tentacles or claws or something).

Bernard Spragg's image of Astraeus hygrometricus.

Here's another species you could find - you'll note it hasn't got the extra collar. Its common name is the 'Poor man's weather glass' because it spreads its rays out in damp weather, but folds them back in when it's dry.

People collected some specimens, so I'm putting those in the freeze drier later. I feel quite hopeful that they'll come out well.

*I've just found out that through DNA analysis, puffballs have now been put into the Agaricaceae. The implication is that they're more closely related to certain 'mushrooms with caps and gills', even though they have much more in common structurally with the non-gilled Gastromycetes like Earthstars. This is hurting my brain a bit. Taxonomists are always doing this - I suppose it's a good thing, as the new arrangements should increasingly reflect the true underlying relationships. But it does make it difficult to keep up! I will look for the best current source for your labels.

Regardless, all this taxonomic juggling can't take away from the simple pleasures of stumbling across crazy-looking fungi. Long may this continue.

Some vaguely mushroom-shaped willow sculptures by Tom Hare (cc image Leonora Enking)

The unexpected benefits of taxonomic-collectioning

Mycologists out on a fungal foray (baskets not obligatory). CC MJ Richardson.

  He* who has joined with companions in a botanical party, and with them often visited native spots of beauty, and gathered their treasures, can truly know the feelings of delight that arise in the breast, feelings by no means of an evanescent nature, but lasting during life - and at once recalled by the sight of the specimens which were collected. An occasional glance at a Herbarium, will call forth many a pleasing recollection, many a circumstance otherwise forgotten. One little plant will often tell a tale of adventure, and revive many an agreeable association of persons, places, and incidents.
 Thomas Bruges Flower in 'The Flora of Wiltshire' (Wiltshire Arch. and Nat. Hist. Magazine, v4. 1858) *He probably meant it in a non-gender-specific way really, but it was 1858 so maybe we ought to let him off. (Did you notice has one of those mad Nominative Determinism surnames?)

His point (and mine), is that getting outside and seeing what species are out there (especially in the company of like minded people), can have excellent long-term effects on your state of mind.

I know this collection is one of your assignments (and so you may feel it is only adding to the pressures you are under), but in my own experience I think it has elements which are quite stress-reducing.

I'm a bit of a serial course-taker, and a while ago I was studying part-time over at one of the other campuses. Everything started off very positively, but half-way through I got really confused and anxious about what I was doing (to the point where I'd sometimes avoid coming in, and that, as I'm sure you know, is not a good idea, as speaking to people always helps sort things out. It worked out ok in the end btw). So I think this assignment is good because once you've settled on a group to collect, what you have to do is very well set out. That clarity makes things a bit easier, and causes less stress.

Being outdoors is good for you. CC image John Chroston.

Also, as you're taking an environment-related course, I guess I don't need to labour the point that going outside and wandering about has great benefits for mental wellbeing. It's not just the sunshine (if there is any) and the fresh air. It's that when you notice plants and animals getting on with their own business, it tends to put a refreshed sense of perspective on things. The current political chaos, the looming gas bill, the argument with your flatmate - they seem less important against the grand scheme of things. All that muddle in your brain gets a chance to clear, like silt settling out in a beaker of water. Plus, you can feel extra virtuous, as your wandering about actually counts as studying, so there's no guilt for "wasting time" away from your desk.

A positive element of this assignment is the element of choice. You come to this course with existing interests and prior experiences, and might want to draw on those to inspire which group to choose. You might want to pursue something requiring skills you already have (maybe you enjoy fiddly practical tasks), or that will encourage you to get out to habitats you're interested in. Or, you might want to try something entirely new: don't be deterred by prior ideas of what you're good at, as the human brain is amazingly flexible (at any age!). Have confidence.

I can imagine the mental benefits of going out in a boat (not so confident of a fish's perspective of angling though). This Chinese depiction by Ma Yuan is from 1195AD!

 I hope you'll feel my colleagues and I can provide a supportive environment and you'll find the lab a pleasant retreat in which to work. I think you may also find yourself helping, and being helped by your coursemates, as you learn to find and identify your chosen plants or creatures. This is definitely A Positive Thing too. Yes, you can be competitive in a nerdy I've-got-more-species-than-you sort of way. But this isn't a 'zero-sum game' where one person's success knocks marks off another's work. Co-operatively sharing your new-found skills reinforces your learning (and makes you feel happy too).

Another aspect of 'snailing' or 'ferning' or whatever it is you choose, is it can really take you out of yourself. I mean that focused state of mind when you're entirely engrossed in what you're doing. Maybe it'll happen when you're out searching for specimens, but I definitely experience it when I'm hunched over the microscope in the lab, staring at the keys and scribbling into my notebook. (I recognise it elsewhere from when I'm being arty, drawing and painting - maybe you have your own version too). It happens when you're absorbed in making sketches and descriptions from your own close observations, and checking and comparing the details of your specimen back and forth with the drawings and descriptions in the ID books. You're not thinking about anything else, and it's like a puzzle to be solved. Sometimes you can get cross when you can't work out the final answer, though even then you'll have been usefully observing and recording new and interesting things (in the case of the microscopic worlds of lichens, beetles and so on, probably features you'd never have suspected). But when your efforts result in triumph, and you get a successful identification, then you will feel rightly chuffed, and I think that's a very satisfying sensation.

This isn't your brain on drugs - this is your brain whilst doing your taxonomic collection. Probably.

So, I hope you'll enjoy and value the process of learning during this assignment, and see its own rewards. That you'll be driven (at least partly) by more than handing in the required objects at the end. You can also go on to use your skills for a wider purpose (as you can read about here) - but I will ramble further about that on another occasion.

Some admirable collections from 2018/19 to inspire you

Please do email me or pop in to OJ16, if you have questions or fancy a chat about any of this. This year we have lab space dedicated to this assignment - which is great! - so you will usually be able to use the microscopes, books and other equipment whenever you like (weekdays, usually 8am-5ish pm).  Do bring your specimens in - naturally I am always keen to see all your interesting finds, but I can also start you off on how to identify and preserve them (or alternatively I can disappear off and leave you in peace to concentrate, if you prefer).
Good luck, have fun, start now - Rhiannon 

One of last year's excellent Hymenoptera collections

Understandably, you may like to see some previous collections for inspiration. But unsurprisingly, the best collections are usually treasured by their owners (they really are), and taken home. I know some people have even brought them back out to impress at job and placement interviews (with success). So in lieu of seeing some of the best from last year in person, here are some photos.

Below is a spider collection which was given a First. It looks really good, doesn't it. Looking good isn't everything, of course. But it does give a good first impression that this student must have put in some consistent effort with everything else. That they've preserved and presented the specimens so carefully gives you confidence they've been thorough about collecting and identifying them. The taxonomically logical arrangement helps make Order out of Chaos for anyone looking at it (the most closely related species positioned next to each other).

Envisage a great looking collection from the start, and it will help you think about what you need to do to achieve that - the number of specimens, the types of places you'll need to go, the information to collect there, the method of preservation you'll need to use, etc.

Plus, if you have a final object in mind, it can help you realise the importance of time management. Last year I saw several people who'd put in huge effort collecting and identifying some amazing lichens, but left themselves no time to pull everything together at the end. They'd not given it much thought, and their last-minute presentation lost them marks that would have added up to an even better grade. Which was frustrating and a shame. So don't let this happen to you!

(This label isn't perfect but it's pretty much there)

The spider-collector cemented their good mark with an excellent monograph (given the equivalent of 80%). Wow (you may say) - how do I get such a good mark? Well, it sounds obvious but it really is this simple: Do What You're Asked To Do. (In this example, the marker noted the monograph "provided a good introduction to the taxonomic group, including the key features of the order and families from the collection." That's what the mark scheme required, and that's what the student did - and so they got a good mark. I know. It sounds bizarrely straightforward).

Handily, this assignment provides a quite specific break-down of what you need to do well for each element. (Perhaps it's easier to see how to get a good mark than when you're just given a single sentence title for an essay). The information is there in the materials you're given by Katy, so do read them. I like to think there's a lot of help in this blog too, and I will try to keep updating it this term.

Look at the artfully displayed and resolutely unmouldy Polypody fern above, from another collection that was given a First. This student was praised for the good quality, correctly identified and suitably diverse set of specimens. But crucially, they got extra-high marks for their monograph and field diary (the marker's comment said "Good detail and evidence of planning. Location photos and plant photos useful, as are sketch diagrams. Very good detailed notes from field, and for identification"). So that's another top tip: go and buy a notebook as the first thing you do, and record what you're doing as you go along. The notebook demonstrates your learning, but is also a way of keeping everything in order - you can draw on your notes to identify specimens, complete your labels, and help you write your monograph.

Here are some other ideas for presentation. This one is a beautifully retro habitat for a well organised, First class snail collection:

This collector's notebook explicitly shows her thought processes, in using a key to identify specimens. This would be a good thing to emulate. Note the nice labelled sketches.

Also earning a first, here's only half of a student's beautifully presented collection of marine molluscs:

and some pages from her interesting and attractive notebook.

You won't go wrong with some similarly thoughtful commentary, pictures and maps, and annotated illustrations of your own. Note that this sort of thing is best created as you go along, while it's all fresh in your head. Preferably, you'd always take your notebook into the field too, just to catch important and easily forgotten thoughts provoked by wandering somewhere new and finding something interesting. One day, doubtless we will all be creating multimedia electronic notebooks with videos and animated diagrams. But in the meantime try to bear with the paper version required. (At least paper notebooks will never have hardware / software problems a decade or ten down the line: scientists are finding useful information in 100 year old field notebooks using their eyeballs, but how many people are digging information off 20 year old floppy discs?)

This collection of seaweeds was given a very good mark, but my photos of it were awful. So I'd like to show you an idea of how it used a very professional-looking way of collecting together the large number of specimens (which as you see above were beautifully preserved on separate sheets of good quality paper, with what appeared to be typed labels -or maybe it was just a retro font that looked like typing, nice anyway). They were held in a 'drop front herbarium box' like this:

from Preservation Equipment Ltd though I'm sure other options exist

So that's an idea for anyone doing seaweeds, or ferns, or Asteraceae flowers - anything where you have lots of flat sheets. It might even work for winter trees. The drop front makes it easy to get the sheets out without damaging them (and it looks better than a lever arch file, you must agree).

For more inspiration, see the other posts I've written about 'how previous students got good marks'.

For a bit of advice on how to choose what to collect, you might want to read my various thoughts on the matter, and the general encouragement here. For more information on notebooks and what to put in them, try the link in the list on the top right. --->

Have you thought about letting Moss into your life?

Three species together on a boulder in the car park. Nice sporophytes eh.

 I've got my toe in now and I'm hoping you're too British in spirit to slam the door. Choosing moss may sound relatively unexciting, but maybe you've not given it a chance. It's possible I've accosted you on a field trip, forcing a lens into your hand (hold it right up to your eye... no, hold it RIGHT UP TO YOUR EYE...) If so, you may have seen that tiny things, when magnified, can be just as fascinating as things more your own size. What are you, scalist? It's these little things that underpin the ecological running of the world. Pandas are all very well but the planet probably won't collapse without them (I'm not heartless really, I'm just very pro-moss).

Not only is it interesting to see the world from a different perspective for a change, you'll find it's not that difficult to collect a good number of species if you're looking for a nice mark. I've just been for a little trot round campus in the unseasonably warm weather, clutching my camera. I think I've got about 10 species already. With trips to a wood, limestone walls, somewhere watery, etc., you could probably treble that without too much hardship. Different places yield different species - mosses can be used as indicator species. The fieldguide from the British Bryological Society has a list of habitats and the species you tend to find there. 

Some moss looking super twizzly and waiting to unfurl in the rain.

 Of course the problem is more identifying what you've found, rather than finding it, perhaps. This is going to be more of an issue. I want to make a guide to the ones you'll most likely encounter first, but I'm not sure how imminent this will be as other things keep getting in the way. If you do want to do moss, you'll have to want to spend some time at a microscope, jotting down little drawings, and having a go with the (not always so friendly) keys. But Dave and I can find some time to help.

Nice red stems, distinctively curved back leaves - heaps of it literally metres from my desk

Elf cups and other unmushroomy fungi

Emma and I took a walk in the local woods this week, to check out which plants are braving February (there's a class on Monday that will be doing some surveying of them and I wanted to make a guide). There were quite a few species, but none were venturing any flowers yet.

However, a very bright object did catch our eyes - and it wasn't a bit of litter, either. It was the amazing and strange Scarlet elf cup (Sarcoscypha coccinea).

Above is the lone specimen we found, but if you're lucky you'll see lots together. They grow on dead wood. I think something so peculiar-looking should definitely be associated with otherworldly creatures like elves. Their scientific name also alludes to their weirdness: 'sarco' is 'flesh' and 'scypha' means 'cup'. (Coccinea will remind you of the squashed beetle colouring cochineal, and it means 'scarlet'.)

CC image by Ceridwen

You'll notice there isn't a mushroomy gill in sight - so where do their spores come from? Mushroomy-mushrooms use little sticking out structures on their gills called basidia. But most fungi are actually like the lovely Elf cups - they're called 'Ascomycetes' and they produce spores in flask-shape cells called asci. There's a nice understandable page about all this on the Australian National Botanic Gardens website.

The beautifully red upper layer of Elf cups is packed with these vertically arranged asci*, and when the spores are ready they are fired off into the air. I even read that this makes a noise, which sounds a bit mad. (Although, if an elf cup releases spores into a wood and no-one's there, does it make a sound? Etc.) Apparently if you pick the right moment you can blow on their surface and see a puff of spores float away.

So if you've chosen fungi, this is a reminder that you want to include both Ascomycetes and Basidiomycetes in your collection.  And that although mushroomy basidiomycetes might be laying relatively low at this time of year, you might still find some ascomycetes. King Alfred's cakes (Daldinia concentrica) are another easily found example.

(*You can also see asci in lichens - because lichens, of course, are part fungus. It's possible to cut a very thin slice and examine them under the microscope. Counting the number of spores per ascus can help sometimes with identification.)

My new love of seaweed

White Nothe headland (CC Jim Champion)

I had a pleasant week's holiday in Dorset last week. We went looking for fossils on the beach (de rigeur for the 'Jurassic Coast') - and I found the most amazing fossil sea urchin. But also discovered a new interest - seaweed. Yes, you can picture me in an anorak fighting the horizontal rain, stuffing slimy algae into a carrier bag - it's more or less accurate.

It's very interesting embarking on a new group of flora or fauna though. It's interesting how you don't even realise how little you know. I thought 'oh yeah, I know a few seaweeds' - but I don't really. I know as much about seaweeds as a botanist who can distinguish a dandelion from a nettle. But you have to start somewhere. And that's one of the first useful things you can feel your brain doing - noticing that one specimen is different from another, even if you don't know their names.

I soon realised there were a lot of different seaweeds washed up on the beach. And some of them were in a place I'd not thought about before: they were tiny and growing on other seaweeds. I suppose it's like when I first got interested in snails, in that not all UK snails are shaped like the familiar garden snail - some are tall and pointy, some are super tiny, some are even spikey. I like the sensation of a hidden world becoming revealed. Yes, you will become one of the Initiated. (It's surely no worse a use of your brain than knowing all the minutiae of the football league or what the latest technological must-have is, and you could even use your knowledge to help protect the natural world).

Calliblepharis cilliata - how could you not like all those weird eyelashy outgrowths?

Some things, once collected, can be put aside and dealt with at leisure. But seaweed is more needy, as I soon realised, instinctively feeling that leaving it in a plastic carrier bag in a heated house might have led to domestic arguments. So I rinsed it under the tap and improvised some paper to press it between. Some of the specimens survived. But some types decayed because they needed more care (more changes of paper) and I wasn't organised enough to assemble the correct equipment. I don't want you to be in this position, where you make an effort but then it amounts to nothing.

That's one reason why you shouldn't leave all your collecting until the last minute, because it takes time to realise what the best techniques are for dealing with your specimens.

But another reason is that you need some time collecting and observing to start recognising what you've seen already, and to be able to pick out what's new. At first you don't see everything - you can only take in the broad picture, and you'll overlook all sorts of weird and wonderful things. It's that extra stage that can only happen with time really. This is an assigment you can get a good mark on - you just need to give yourself a bit of time to do yourself and it justice. That's my advice.

I bought a new seaweed book. Of course. I should stop spending all my wages on books, but there always seems to be another interesting one to be had. I must realise that owning a book does not equate to knowing or understanding the information in it, though.

My new purchase is 'Seaweeds of Britain and Ireland' (2nd ed.) by Bunker, Brodie, Maggs and Bunker (2017). Keen seaweed student F also has a copy and has apparently been finding it very useful. The photos certainly seem very clear and there's a lot of description and information. I felt a bit overwhelmed thinking about the number of species (the book has over 200 and there are over 600 around the UK - who knew). But they're such beautiful things and I do want to try to recognise a few more than my current paltry efforts. I recommend. You're welcome to come and look at my copy also.

I have been looking at the Seasearch website (the instigators of the book), and if you're keen on diving they run identification courses around the British Isles - the idea being that you can then go out and start recording sea creatures and seaweeds for yourself, or on one of their special survey days. Imagine the fun (if only I could trust myself not to drown).

Endemic snails in Tenerife - you too can find something rather interesting (and not even realise)

Oh to be back in the Tenerife sunshine. Never mind. I guess spring is not far away, and then there will be all sorts of interesting plants and animals to discover in this country. I really hope that you'll be enthused with whatever group you choose, and give yourself enough time to delve into whatever most fires your interest about them, and write about that in your notebook (I hope you find using your notebook in Tenerife has given you some encouragement).

This morning I have been researching which ferns live on the cloud-forested slopes of Anaga (at the north of the island, for those too unfortunate to have been on the fieldtrip). I want to make a guide so perhaps future groups can take quadrats to discover how fern species change along the trail.

I'm getting very drawn in into the world of the fern. Which is a good thing really. And likewise the other day I was inspired to try and identify some empty snail shells I'd spotted on a jaunt to some open ground near the hotel. Here's one of them - it's about the size of a Brown-lipped snail from the UK, but it's got the most amazing ribby sculpture.

I found a list of endemic Tenerifean snails and checking their pictures thought it might be Hemicycla plicaria. (I don't think I've found a list of non-endemic Tenerifean snails. But then again, the vast majority of land snails there are endemic. I guess you don't get a whole lot of genetic interaction between Tenerife and the continent when it comes to snails).

I was pleased enough with this discovery, but then ended up going down a rabbit hole of snail-related information. For one thing, it turns out that this species is really localised and rare - in fact it only lives in the area around Candelaria where we were staying (there's a map here).   It's apparently only within a 10km2 area. And so it gets on the Critically Endangered list of the IUCN.

So that's really amazing isn't it, and goes to show that you never know what you might find. Ironically, when we were about to set foot on the land to have a poke about, a local couple tried to put us off, presumably thinking we would like a nice stroll along the sea front, not a hike over some "waste ground" where they had just allowed their dog to relieve itself. I tried to communicate that we were "looking for animals", but they said there were no animals. How Wrong They Were. We found lizards, geckos, beetles and bugs, birds, - and a critically endangered snail, for goodness sake.

We might not have any endemic snails in the UK. But there are many species you'll never have seen before and will be surprised at. And if you're seeking a different group, who knows what interesting things you might find. Nature doesn't come with massive signposts. You'll definitely find interesting things that other people routinely ignore (to their detriment), and you may even find something very unusual (as this student did).

I hope you get motivated to get stuck in. And please do bring me things, as I'm always interested to see them and will do my best to help you work out how to identify them.