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#leafy liverwort
vandaliatraveler · 2 years
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Liverworts (Marchantiophyta) are small, non-vascular plants with a fascinating lifecycle typical of the bryophytes, which include mosses and hornworts. Due to their small size and growth habit, these primitive beauties are often overlooked, but they’re actually quite common. I often find them growing in the “splash” zone of shady seeps and brooks, typically clinging to rock surfaces. There are two types of liverworts: thallose liverworts, whose scaly, flat surfaces branch out in a “Y” pattern; and leafy liverworts, which have overlapping, leaf-like scales arranged in at least two rows. The photo above is of snakeskin liverwort (Conocephalum salebrosum), a thallose liverwort I found growing in a seep along the Mon River Trail. As you might surmise, liverworts make dramatic show plants in terrariums, especially if you can get them to sprawl over a rock surface.
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mirandamckenni1 · 6 months
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Liverworts Use The Rain To Make Their Clones "Correction: 03:09 Leafy liverworts are estimated to make up the majority of the diversity of liverwort species." "Correction: 05:08 Not all thalloid liverworts have gemma cups, and there are leafy liverworts that use gemmae for reproduction as well." The first 100 people to download Endel by clicking the link will get a free week of audio experiences! https://bit.ly/JourneytoMicrocosmos An ambiguously long time ago, there was this theory of medicine. An idea that if you came across a plant that looked like a body part, that meant it was meant to treat ailments that targeted said part. And this put a lot of pressure on liverwort, simply because it resembled the liver. Follow Journey to the Microcosmos: Twitter: https://twitter.com/journeytomicro Facebook: https://ift.tt/SshWHqp Shop The Microcosmos: https://ift.tt/RL15abf Support the Microcosmos: https://ift.tt/mFC1RS0 More from Jam’s Germs: Instagram: https://ift.tt/jprnbFD YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCn4UedbiTeN96izf-CxEPbg Hosted by Sam Schultz: https://www.youtube.com/@SciShow https://www.youtube.com/@SciShowTangents Music by Andrew Huang: https://www.youtube.com/andrewhuang Journey to the Microcosmos is a Complexly production. Find out more at https://ift.tt/jpkNyRQ Stock video from: https://ift.tt/lXH27Yf https://ift.tt/ilaXrmQ https://ift.tt/v8VhUcf https://ift.tt/HtiPLj4 SOURCES: https://ift.tt/F54IjT8 https://ift.tt/mOd0Tv6 https://ift.tt/mOd0Tv6 https://ift.tt/hJqQPZ5 https://ift.tt/ueoi1LP https://ift.tt/LbXSsWx https://ift.tt/5VAxgrs https://ift.tt/ftEyHmd This video has been dubbed using an artificial voice via https://ift.tt/RZCrYXw to increase accessibility. You can change the audio track language in the Settings menu. via YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jKopDz3K8xw
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thebashfulbotanist · 7 years
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Guess what I found yesterday… more liverworts! These are leafy liverworts I found on an oak tree.-Spores&More
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dandelioncore · 3 years
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Pictures from the garden today
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madmushlove · 2 years
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LICHEN
Lichen are compound organisms. They’re communities of various species, needing each other to live as one.  
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The main body of the lichen is fungal, but rather than consuming some food source, the fungi partner with a photosynthesizing biont, either algae or cyanobacteria depending on the lichen species.
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Recent research shows that lichen are even weirder than people thought, having at least three symbionts or more, including a second fungi.  Yeast.
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They can be strangely mesmeric with their little and often colorful complexities.
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Right at home living on rocks or wood, they’re often right amongst heaps of moss or liverwort.  
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Mixed up like that, it might be easy to confuse them with plants.
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But their colors and shapes give them away.  Structure can vary greatly.  Shrubby, leafy, crusty or powdery. 
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Lichen can be found all over the world, including Antarctica, as they resist extremes in conditions.  
But they are awfully vulnerable to air pollution, making them obvious indicators of air quality. 
Places with greater diversity of any life really but particularly lichen are probably healthier and less polluted.
I usually photograph fungi near my home in Cleveland, but I traveled to Appalachian Pennsylvania to find these beauties all on the same walk. 
Not used to this kind of access to my lichen friends, it felt to me like some kind of wonderland!
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botanyshitposts · 5 years
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Can u tell me about moss
(okay so this is gonna be a long post bc i took and then TAed a class partially about mosses so anybody who doesnt want a moss crash course should start scrolling now)
formally mosses are the only things in the taxonomic division Bryophyta. informally you’ll hear people refer to mosses as well as liverworts (Marchantiophyta) and hornworts (Anthocerotophyta) as ‘bryophytes’, because for a long time the three were all lumped into that division together, and people got used to using the term ‘bryophyte’ interchangeably with ‘nonvascular plant’. 
that term, ‘nonvascular’, is the big distinguisher for these three. basically these plants are very, very ancient lineages, as in liverworts are suspected to be the first plants to crawl out of the primordial ooze, and they don’t have proper, distinguishable vascular tissues (xylem and phloem are the main ones in all vascular ‘higher’ plants that forms the other 99% of the plant kingdom). they have primitive vascular tissues, but they’re not hefty enough to do much in terms of moving water through the plant. their ancestors weren’t able to get very far from the shore of the sea/away from a water source, because they needed to stay wet and depended on water for reproduction. while the latter is still true, modern mosses can be very well adapted to dry areas, and some are able to completely desiccate themselves and go dormant for long periods of time before being revived with the next rain. 
out of this triad of Old Lads, mosses and (leafy) liverworts look the most similar and get mixed up the most (there are ‘leafy’ liverworts and ‘thalloid’ liverworts. thalloid liverworts are wack and do not look like mosses at all). the differences between them are incredibly minute, but (leafy!!) liverworts, to be crude about it, are kind of proto-mosses with simpler physiologies. a common signifier is that leafy liverworts almost never have a costa (a single vein running down the middle of each leaf) and instead have completely smooth leaves, whereas costas are common in mosses. other differences are infuriatingly consequential (’oh, but see this liverwort has a costa but it’s still a liverwort, don’t ask questions’) and honestly i have no idea who decided which plants were leafy liverworts and which plants were mosses, but that’s just me.
i should mention also that mosses, like liverworts, are split into two major groups based on their growth forms: ‘acrocarpous’ mosses are mosses who’s stalks stand straight up, and ‘pleurocarpous’ mosses are mosses who’s stalks crawl along the ground. acrocarpous mosses won’t have branching stalks, whereas pleurocarpous mosses can. an example of an acrocarpous moss is on the left, an example of a pleurocarpous moss is on the right:
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mosses do not flower. they reproduce by spores. liverworts and hornworts also reproduce by spores, not flowers. it’s easy to forget that ferns, which are like, THE original Old Lads, are actually younger than these lineages and are considered vascular plants for having more advanced xylems and phloems, and flowers didn’t come for several hundred million years after them. mosses reproduce by producing male and female reproductive organs on the parent plant, with sperm and eggs being produced in each, respectively. the sperm can swim, and fertilize the female eggs, which then sprout while still on the plant into stalks (seta) with capsules on the end. these capsules are full of spores, and when the plant is ready the tip falls off and lets the spores catch the breeze, and hopefully a few will find suitable conditions to sprout into new mosses. the entire cycle looks like this:
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okay. habitats. mosses live on such a small scale that it’s best to think of how they live in terms of microhabitats instead of habitats, meaning that like, if you look at a forest from the road, that’s one habitat, but the mosses in that forest are experiencing a ton of microhabitats within that habitat. a moss that grows on the side of the tree will dry out really fast after it rains, so a species that might be more susceptible to overwatering may survive better on a tree trunk than at the base of the tree; both places, although at the same physical location, provide way different conditions and will be favored by different species. 
a moss that grows in a crack on the pavement will probably be absolutely swimming in water when it rains, so it’s probably a species that’s either fine with being submerged (and regularly trampled) or otherwise tolerant of it. a moss growing under a decaying log will have more shelter than others, and will have less airflow and higher humidity. if you’re a moss living on the bark on the side of a stump, and that bark rots enough to one day peel away and fall off, that might be absolutely devastating to you despite only losing like one inch of area, but the newly-exposed rotting hardwood creates a new microhabitat that might be favored by other species. it’s one of those things that you really start to notice once you start thinking about it.
now. i want to end this post with the world’s tallest self-supporting moss. my lichen and bryophyte professor has seen this moss in person and has confirmed it is really just Like That. the moss is the acrocarpus Dawsonia superba, and it’s native to Oceana. the tallest ever found was in Borneo, and was a meter tall. here’s a picture of it by gailtv on iNatrualist, observed december 17th, 2015 in New Zealand:
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Chonkers™. now, the largest moss that doesn’t support itself is a pleurocarpous moss-vine, Spiridens reinwardtii, also native to Oceania, which crawls up tree trunks and can grow to a length of 3 meters. here’s one spotted by dantn, also on iNaturalist, observed august 23rd 2006 in northern Indonesia (it’s the one that looks like artificial christmas tree branches. that’s one single moss):
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end note: i think i’ve recced this book on here before but a really good book to learn more about mosses is Gathering Moss: A Natural and Cultural History of Mosses by Robin Wall Kimmerer, which is a required book for the course i learned all this in and helped teach later. it’s not a field guide (for that I would recommend finding a moss and liverwort ID guide for your region), but it’s just about mosses in general and essays about how great and wild they are. VERY much worth it
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What is a moss?
Mosses, like the other bryophytes (liverworts and hornworts), are an ancient group of simple plants dating back some 360 million years. They represent an evolutionary step up from algae, the simplest plants in the Plant Kingdom. After vascular plants, mosses are the most diverse group of plants, consisting of over 10,000 species in about 850 genera. Over 500 species in 200 genera are found in New Zealand.
In the life cycle of bryophytes, a sexually-reproducing gametophyte generation alternates with a spore-producing sporophyte generation. The plant that is conspicuous in the field as a moss is the gametophyte. Fertilisation of the moss gametophyte egg gives rise to a cell, the zygote, which grows into a sporophyte attached to, and partially parasitic on, the gametophyte. The sporophyte is, in most mosses, a short erect stalk or seta bearing a single terminal capsule in which spores, usually in great numbers, are produced. The typical sporophyte has some photosynthetic tissue and an intricate system of teeth at the mouth of the capsule to regulate spore release into the air. These features are quite different from those of liverwort sporophytes. Spores that establish on suitable substrates can develop into new gametophytes. Mosses can also spread via asexual or vegetative reproduction, from small pieces of stem or individual leaves. Some mosses produce on the gametophyte specialised structures for asexual reproduction called brood bodies, which can take on many different forms depending on the species, and are helpful for identification.
Some mosses, such as Rhacomitrium languinosum, are able to tolerate periodic drying out. Photo: Jesse Bythell
Moss gametophytes lack the woody tissue of vascular plants and have, in place of roots, a system of filamentous rhizoids that serve primarily for attachment. The leaves are mostly one cell thick and are arranged in spirals about the stem axis. They are usually pointed, rather than lobed, and often have a conspicuous nerve, features that further assist in distinguishing mosses from other bryophytes. The stems of many short-lived mosses are erect and terminate with sex organs and sporophytes. Other, more long-lived mosses have an extensive prostrate, branching growth form on which sporophytes are periodically produced.
Mosses are dependent on available surface water for metabolism and for reproduction. Water and solutes are absorbed directly through leaf surfaces, and a surface water film is required for male gametes to swim to fertilize eggs. Mosses are, thus, conspicuous in damp environments. In New Zealand, they are found in lakes, attached to rocks in fresh water streams, are present on soil and rocks on stream banks and on the forest floor, and grow abundantly on fallen logs and as epiphytes on tree bases, trunks, branches and twigs. They are most evident along with liverworts in montane cloud forests where transpiration is low and water can be absorbed from mist droplets. They are also present, however, in a wide range of more arid terrestrial environments, from coastal spray zones to alpine rocks. The ability of some mosses to occupy more arid environments stems from their remarkable ability to withstand long periods of desiccation and return to full metabolism when water again becomes available. Tolerance of desiccation and low temperatures enables some mosses to survive even in Antarctica.
Mosses vary in size from 1 metre mats and cushions down to less then 1 mm. The flora includes Dawsonia superba and Dendroligotrichum dendroides that stand nearly 40 cm high. Umbrella form forest mosses are also common.
About 20% are endemics. The main affinities are primarily with Australia and, to a lesser extent, with South America.
Ecological Significance and differences with other bryophytes
For more information about mosses see*:
British Bryological Society 
American Bryological & Lichenological Society 
Auckland University moss information 
* The Network is not responsible for the content of external internet sites
Some New Zealand Moss images
1. Polytrichum juniperinum, a hair-cap moss, and Hypnum cupressiforme, a feather moss
2. Polytrichum juniperinum, reddish sun-form
3. Bryum argenteum in crack of boardwalk, urban moss
4. Cyathophorum bulbosum shoot, gametophyte (leafy shoot) generation
5. Warnstorfia fluitans capsules, sporophyte (spore capsule) generation
6. Plagiomnium novaezelandiae capsules, sporophyte (spore capsule) generation
7. Hypnum comatum capsule teeth
8. Ptychomnion aciculare capsule teeth
9. Campylopus clavatus brood bodies
10. Pulchrinodus inflatus spiral leaves
11. Hypopterygium sp. leaf nerve (midrib or vein)
12. Physcomitrium pyriforme stems, young capsules at stem tips
13. Cryphaea tenella stem, mature capsules on stem branches
14. Ceratodon purpureus dew-wetted capsules and stalks
15. Hypnum chrysogaster epiphytic moss (on tree-bark)
16. Barbula calycina desiccated but still-living shoots
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melangle · 3 years
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not sure what this little leafy liverwort is, pretty cool looking though
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scrappapertiger · 4 years
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Leafy liverwort. A second print from my mini sort of artist residency at Cefn Coch in Wales. #liverwort #bryophytes #naturalhistory #reductionprint #reliefprint #linocutprint #linocut #linoprint #printmaking #botanicalillustration (at Machynlleth) https://www.instagram.com/p/B3we9QBDAkm/?igshid=lu6heqhzr692
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paleoplant · 5 years
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Leafy liverwort vs leafy moss... I know you get them confused; you’re welcome. http://bit.ly/2H5dv06
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let-go-and-allow · 7 years
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Leafy Liverwort Spore Capsule Open by Grover Schrayer Via Flickr: The little football- shaped spore capsule splits 4 ways and opens into a four-pointed star.
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my-name-is-dahlia · 5 years
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Dictionary (pt.cccxciv)
Words taken from Essential Atlas of Botany, Barron’s Educational Series:
baobab (n.) an African tree, Adansonia digitata, with an enormously thick trunk and large fruit containing edible pulp.
antherozoid (n.) another term for spermatozoid.
apical (adj.) of, at, or forming an apex.
liverwort (n.) any small leafy or thalloid bryophyte of the class Hepaticae, of which some have liver-shaped parts.
mesophyll (n.) the inner tissue of a leaf.
palynology (n.) the study of pollen, spores, etc., especially from archaeological or geological deposits, e.g., for carbon dating and the investigation of past environments.
pyxis (n.) a small box or casket.
silique (n.) the long narrow seed pod of a cruciferous plant.
transgenics (n.) the branch of biology concerned with transgenic organisms.
cereal (n.) any kind of grain used for food.
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thebashfulbotanist · 4 years
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This sure looks like a moss, but it’s actually a leafy liverwort, Porella platyphylloidea. These are some of the largest and most impressive leafy liverworts - most are much smaller. Leafy liverworts prefer damp, cool places, though P. platyphylloidea can sometimes be found on relatively dry hillsides or tree trunks. The tightly appressed, scale-like leaves are distinctive. 
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earthsupport · 6 years
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Vitamin :AAlfalfa, Burdock, Cayenne, Dandelion, Garlic, Kelp, Marshmallow, Papaya, Parsley, Pokeweed, Raspberry, Red clover, Saffron, Watercress, Yellow dock Thiamine (B1): Cayenne, Dandelion, Fenugreek, Kelp, Parsley, Raspberry Riboflavin (B2): Alfalfa, Burdock, Dandelion, Fenugreek, Kelp, Parsley, Raspberry Niacin (B3):Alfalfa, Burdock, Dandelion, Fenugreek, Kelp, Parsley, Sage Pyridoxine (B6):Alfalfa, Wheat, Corn, Mugwort Cobalamin (B12) :Alfalfa, Kelp Vitamin C :Alfalfa, Burdock, Boneset, Catnip, Cayenne, Chickweed, Dandelion, Garlic, Hawthorn Berry, Horseradish, Kelp, Lobelia, Parsley, Plantain, Pokeweed, Papaya, Raspberry, Rose Hips, Shepherd's purse, Strawberry, Watercress, Yellow Dock Vitamin D:Alfalfa, Watercress Vitamin E:Alfalfa, Dandelion, Kelp, Raspberry, Rose hips, Watercress Vitamin K:Alfalfa, Plantain, Shepherd's purse Rutin Dandelion, Rose hips, Rue CalciumColtsfoot, Chive, Chamomile, Caraway seed, Cleavers, Dandelion, Dill, Horsetail, Meadow sweet, Mistletoe, Nettles, Parsley, Pimpernel, Plantain, Poppy seed, Raspberry, Shepherd's purse, Silverweed, Watercress, Yellow dock ChlorophyllAlfalfa, most leafy green potherbs Chlorine Alfalfa, Dandelion, Dill stems, Fennel stems, Goldenseal, Kelp, Myrrh, Nettles, Parsley, Plantain, Raspberry, Uva ursi, Watercress, Wintergreen CopperAgar-agar, Dandelion, Dulse, Kelp, Liverwort, Nettles, Parsley, Sorrel Fluorine Corn silk, Dill, Garlic, Horsetail, Plantain, Watercress IodineDulse, Garlic, Irish moon, Kelp, Sarsaparilla, Mustard, Parsley Iron Alfalfa, Burdock, Blue cohosh, Cayenne, Dandelion, Dulse, Kelp, Mullein, Nettles, Parsley, Pokeweed, Rhubarb, Rose hips, Yellow dock MagnesiumAlfalfa, Blue cohosh, Carrot leaves, Cayenne, Dandelion, Dill, Kelp, Mistletoe, Mullein, Nettles, Peppermint, Primrose, Raspberry, Skullcap, Walnut leaves, Willow, Wintergreen, Manganese, Agar-agar, Bladderwrack, Burdock, Dulse, Kelp, Nettles, Sorrel, Strawberry leaves, Wintergreen, Yellow dock PhosphorusAlfalfa, Blue cohosh, Calamus, Calendula, Caraway, Cayenne, Chickweed, Dandelion, Garlic, Irish moss, Kelp, Licorice, Parsley, Purslane, Pokeweed, Raspberry, Rhubarb, Rose hips, Watercress, Yellow dock Potassium Alfalfa, Blue cohosh, Birch, Borage, Chamomile, Coltsfoot, Comfrey, Centaury, Dandelion, Dulse, Eyebright, Fennel, Irish moss, Kelp, Mistletoe, Mullein, Nettles, Papaya, Parsley, Peppermint, Plantain, Primrose, Raspberry, Shepherd's purse, White oak bark, Wintergreen, Yarrow Selenium Kelp, most seaweeds Silicon Alfalfa, Blue cohosh, Burdock, Chickweed, Corn silk, Flaxseed, Horsetail, Kelp, Nettle, Poppyseed, Raspberry, Sunflower seed SodiumApple tree bark, Alfalfa, Cleavers, Dandelion, Dill, Dulse, Fennel, Irish moss, Kelp, Mistletoe, Nettles, Parsley, Shepherd's purse, Thyme SulphurAlfalfa, Burdock, Cayenne, Coltsfoot, Eyebright, Fennel, Garlic, Irish moss, Kelp, Mullein, Nettles, Parsley, Plantain, Raspberry, Sage, Shepherd's purse, Thyme ZincKelp, Marshmallow
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We’re bringing the world to Alberta!
By: RAM Staff
Hosted from June 19th to 25th, #MuseumWeek is an international online event celebrating and showcasing all things from cultural institutions. The seven-day event has seven themes and seven hashtags. June 24 is #TravelMW and we decided to show you all the places Royal Alberta Museum staff go -- from Falher, Alberta to Hokkaido, Japan -- to find stories for our galleries and conduct research that informs our exhibits and programs.
Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (Fort Chipewyan and Southern Alberta)
The Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute (ABMI) manages a rigorous, world-class, science-based program that measures and reports on the state of land, water and living resources across Alberta. The ABMI Processing Centre at the Royal Alberta Museum provides laboratory, taxonomic, and curatorial expertise for the institute.
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Above: Alberta Biodiversity Monitoring Institute technicians collect lichen and moss in southern Alberta, 2016
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Above: RAM and ABMI botanist Varina Crisfield prepares to quad up the Fort Chipewyan winter road in August 2016 to conduct research on vascular plants and lichen.
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Above: Crisfield takes a coffee break while quadding up the Fort Chipewyan winter road.
Quaternary Environments (Hinton, Alberta)
Britta Jensen (below, in red) and Alwynne Beaudoin (below, in yellow) conducted research and collected samples in the Hinton area in September 2016. They were looking for layers of volcanic ash, or tephra, preserved in the sediments. These show up as thin white bands in the section. The ash is from an eruption from Mount St. Helen’s, Washington, about 3,600 years ago. The Hinton area is one of the most northerly locations where this ash has been identified as a visible layer. Volcanic eruptions and their effects on modern and ancient landscapes will be featured in the new natural history gallery.
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Invertebrate Zoology (Utah, USA)
Matthias Buck, assistant curator of invertebrate zoology, spent time on the Colorado Plateau near Moab, Utah (pictured below) searching for a rare local population of paper wasps. Paper wasps have been studied extensively for their intriguing social behaviours, and new species are still being discovered in North America! The new museum will feature a live colony of paper wasps, the first museum display of its kind worldwide!
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Cultural Communities (Falher and Lac La Biche, Alberta)
Falher In the summer of 2014, Matt Levitt (assistant curator of cultural communities) conducted research about beekeeping and the honey industry in northern Alberta’s francophone communities, for an exhibit that you’ll see in the new museum. While he was there, the community was celebrating its annual Honey Festival (pictured below). 
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Lac La Biche In the fall of 2014, Levitt also travelled to Lac La Biche (pictured below) to do field research and collecting for a display in the new museum about Lebanese-Canadians’ role in Alberta’s fur trade history. “I’d never been to Lac La Biche before and was impressed by the massive lake and how beautiful it was under autumn leaves and stormy skies. The lake was crucial for mink ranching as it provided fish to feed the mink and ice to cool the fish,” Levitt says.
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Botany (southeastern Manitoba, Lac la Biche, Alberta and Rumsey Natural Area in Alberta)
Manitoba Richard Caners, curator of botany, examines mosses and liverworts growing on a rock outcrop in southeastern Manitoba. Richard is currently undertaking a study on the bryophyte flora of the Great Lakes–St. Lawrence forest region of this unique part of the province.
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Lac la Biche, Alberta Speckled greenshield (Flavopunctelia flaventior, pictured below) is one of 15 lichens that will be on display in the new museum, showing the diversity of the five groups of lichens found in Alberta. Speckled greenshield is a foliose lichens. It is leafy and has distinct lobes. This specimen was collected near Lac la Biche by Donna Cherniawsky (assistant curator of botany).
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Credit: Roxanne Hastings Roundleaf sundew (pictured below) is one of several carnivorous plants in Alberta’s boreal forest. It grows in environments that lack the nutrients it needs to survive so it gets its nutrition in another way: by luring and trapping insects with the sticky droplets on its leaves. The droplets contain digestive enzymes that break down the insect’s body. The display at our new museum is accompanied by a terrarium with living sundews.
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Credit: Roxanne Hastings Rumsey Natural Area in Alberta Grasslands are more than just grasses. An exhibit in the new museum will showcase six different non-grass plants that are an important component of Alberta’s grasslands, including spike-moss (Selaginella densa, below). Spike moss is not a moss at all; it is closely related to ferns. The long white bristles at the tip of each leaf help protect the plant from moisture loss and from the sun’s damaging ultraviolet radiation.
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Credit: Richard Caners
Quaternary Environments (Bow River Watershed)
In 2016, the Quaternary Environments team (pictured below) collected samples for the flood sample project in the Bow River Watershed.
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 Mammalogy (across Alberta)
Southwestern Alberta Assistant curator of mammalogy Bill Weiman (pictured below) travelled to the slopes of Plateau Mountain in southwestern Alberta in search of American pika, hoary marmots, and golden-mantled ground squirrels, as part of mammalogy’s program to document the distribution of Alberta’s mammals.
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West-central Alberta Mammalogy assistant Corey Smereka (pictured below) listens for a signal from a collared cougar before going to a possible prey site in west-central Alberta. The mammalogy program is doing research on cougars’ movements and the survival of female cougars and their kittens.
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Credit: Mark Edwards North-central Alberta Kristin Panylyk, former museum interpreter, and Jordanne Taylor, mammalogy summer field assistant, examined small mammal community ecology and fire succession in the semi-forested sand hill habitat of north-central Alberta. In the photo below, they are ear-tagging a deer mouse.
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Credit: Mark Edwards Alberta Grasslands Bill Weiman and Dr. Mark Edwards, curator of mammalogy, travelled to Alberta grasslands (pictured below) in search of pronghorn. Two new pronghorn displays will be featured in the new museum.
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Credit: Mark Edwards Ronald Lake area (north-eastern Alberta) Mark Edwards (pictured below in the back of an A-Star helicopter) conducted research on wood bison in the Ronald Lake area.
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Credit: Scott Nielsen
As part of his research, Edwards (below) also installed a camera trap to record the presence of wood bison and predator activity.
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Credit: Scott Nielsen
Learning Team (Head-Smashed-In Buffalo Jump, Alberta)
To reveal the behind the scenes work of the museum and bring it to life for our visitors, our Learning and Programming Team actively pursues hands-on experiences with our conservation, design, curatorial teams and other departments. They will bring this experience to the tours, workshops and other hands-on activities that will be offered in the new museum.  Here, they are a assisting Bob Dawe, Assistant Curator of Archaeology, with an excavation at Head Smashed-In Buffalo Jump.  
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Quaternary Palaeontology (South Dakota, USA)
Curator of Quaternary palaeontology Dr. Chris Jass (below) travelled to South Dakota to conduct field work. Part of his work involved excavating an entrance to an Ice Age Cave deposit.
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Geology (northeastern Alberta, Waterton, and Hokkaido, Japan)
North-eastern Alberta Learning team member Sean MacQueen (pictured below) went on a geological field excursion to the Canadian Shield exposed in northeastern Alberta. This was part of a trip to collect material an exhibit in the new museum. Tagging along with curatorial staff during field work excursions is a great way to exchange information with the learning team and give them real-world experience that educators can use in program development and delivery.
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Waterton, Alberta Shauna Coombs and Daniel Francis (below) travelled to north of Waterton National Park. The rocks they are standing on are 1.4 billion years old! These are some of the oldest rocks exposed in the Rocky Mountains. Some of the volcanic rocks collected on this trip (pillow basalts) will be on display in the new museum.
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Hokkaido, Japan Melissa Bowerman, assistant curator of geology, went to Japan on an exchange with the Hokkaido Museum. During her visit, she was able to collect an exceptionally rare metamorphic rock for our museum’s collection from this trip: a blueschist. You will see it on display in the new museum. In the photo below, she is in the field with a curator from the Hidaka Mountain Museum, examining metamorphic rocks.
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On the same trip, Bowerman (below) also examined a section of pumice (a volcanic rock).
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botanyshitposts · 5 years
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I saw liverwort in your tags and. what is liverwort
pre-moss moss. 
although both of them are in the same family and usually referred to as a group (liverworts, hornworts and mosses are considered ‘the bryophytes’ even though the scientific name ‘bryophyta’ only applies to mosses, yes its weird and confusing) the difference from an evolutionary standpoint is huge; liverworts were some of the first plants to evolve onto land, and are much less complex than mosses. 
(helpful side note: the holy trinity of liverworts, hornworts and mosses are considered the ‘nonvascular’ plants, meaning that they don’t have a proper xylem and phloem to conduct food and water to other parts of their bodies and thus lack a vascular system.)
the difference like….functionally between liverworts and mosses? like if youre in the field and stuff? mosses usually have leaves that spiral around the center axis/stem things, while liverworts usually have leaves that are lined up on either side. on a technical botanical level the difference is that mosses have leaf midribs (little stripe of reinforced tissue that goes down the middle of the leaf, referred to in mosses as a ‘costa’) and liverworts dont. 
also, the two major moss growth forms (pleurocarpous and acrocarpous) are VERY different from the two major liverwort growth forms (leafy and thalloid). in the two moss growth forms, it’s like, ‘oh, are the individual moss shoots growing against the ground and branching (pleurocarpous) or standing straight up and not branching (acrocarpous)?’ but like, they all look like mosses. in liverworts it’s like, ‘does it look kinda like a moss (leafy) or does it look like a prehistoric abomination (thalloid)?”
for reference, this is a thalloid liverwort:
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oh yeah. like, i look at thalloid liverworts and can really see like….how they managed to crawl onto land first out of all the multicellular prehistoric plants we know of lmao
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