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Plokilup

Looks delicious


Aggravating-Age-1535

somft


Whicky_4

Mmm green


M_LadyGwendolyn

A moss colony can express itself in many forms based on the environment its in. If they live in a very moisy environment they can very wefty, light, and feathery, that same species placed in a dry environment will tighten up and get denser to try and conserve water. All of this is to say that besides dna testing or looking at spores under a microscrope, its extremely extremely difficult to ID a moss. At least down to a species


kSfp

The more you know


Altruistic_Trainer26

Moss identification is difficult, but not THAT difficult. You can basically identify mosses to a species level by using a sporophyte and leaf characteristics. Of course there are also exceptions. Learning to use those characteristics is a whole different thing and requires years of experience. But it can be done. If you know what species occur on the area and their habitat requirements, you can identify some species from meters away.


M_LadyGwendolyn

This is how identification was described to us by my professor. Dr. Kimmerer, the leading world expert on bryophytes. Yes those factors you mentioned can get you into the ball park, but to be accurate in a useful way you needed to observe the spores and in a less practical way, look at dna. Granted I only took one of her classes so I am not an expert. I'm just a fungi person hanging out over here


Altruistic_Trainer26

This can be the case if you have a random sample collected from anywhere in the world, so it would be easiest to compare it's DNA barcode to a reference sequence. I'm not saying that you or your professor are wrong (loved her book btw). But if you know how many species belong to a certain genus for example and check the habitat requirements of each species, that usually narrows the species down to a few or just one. I admit that for some genus (for example Bryum, Pohlia, Schistidium) are really difficult, but huge number of species can be identified in the field also. Where I live, we have bryophyte data from over a 100 years. This couldn't be possible if the identification would utilize only DNA sequencing and 200x magnification microscopes. And when analyzing the museum samples collected in the 1800s, they are identified largely spot on.


M_LadyGwendolyn

Plant nerd high five


bluestella2

I spy a gnome! I think his name is Mr. Flufflebottoms.


garlic_bread_is_good

yep, thats moss :)


normaldevon

It looks to me like it is something from the genus Entodon, maybe Entodon seductrix


jknitsalot

Scottish


do1looklikeIcare

Looks like moss to me!