Pretty sure I got this right. I know for sure I found Blasia on this road last year. There was so little here this year that I did not collect a sample.
A. Castner
Rocky Ridge
Soil on serpentine outcrop
Apparently this is the only genus of simple thalloid liverworts in California that has stems and leaves. That's confusing, no wonder I thought it was a leafy liverwort and keyed it out to Jungermannia.
The rhizoids are suppose to be purplish but they look more red to me.
I hate that I need to look at its spores to ID it to species.
Light was terrible so I didn't get good pics, but I'm SUPER curious about the ID of this liverwort, so I'm posting them anyway. Thalli up to 6-7 cm long, growing in a seep by the side of a logging road. Upper thalli were more round, big straps only seemed to be growing in the drip zone. No apparent midrib or reproductive structures, though it was soaking wet so it was hard to see the small stuff. My present guess is Aneura pinguis, but that's just short of being a shot in the dark.
I thought I was collecting a male hornwort plant but when I got it home I saw the gemmea tubes. Two great finds for me on this day!
A small thalloid liverwort with lobed leaves. Leaves had 3-4 lobes. Growing on a slightly rotten log next to a trail in a temperate rainforest. On the same log end was some ptidilum or pacific fuzzwort.
I think it is R. palmata. It has lots of gemmae, the dorsal epidermal cells do not seem to be as large as R. latifrons and I like the name palmata better. heh.
Cross section is from the thallus. It is hard to tell where the thalus and the lobes are with all the ruffles this has. The thallus was pretty much stuck to the wood with the lobes sticking up.
Metzgeriales is an order of liverworts. The group is sometimes called the simple thalloid liverworts: "thalloid" because the members lack structures resembling stems or leaves, and "simple" because their tissues are thin and relatively undifferentiated. All species in the order have a small gametophyte stage and a smaller, relatively short-lived, spore-bearing stage. Although these plants are almost entirely restricted to regions with high humidity or readily available moisture, the group as a whole is widely distributed,...
