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).