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Difficult Morphological Characters Moss Treatments Liverwort and Hornwort Treatments More |
General Treatments
Bryophyte Flora of North America, Vol 2 The generic treatments to be collated in the as yet unpublished second volume, are an invaluable resource.
A Key to Bay Area Mosses by Alan Whittemore. A nice key that limits the possibile species to known San Francisco Bay area mosses, and as such is much simpler than Norris & Shevock. Last updated Nov. 2009
A Perspective Oriented Guide to the Identification of North American Bryophytes by Malcom Sargent and Diane Lucas. A non-dichotomous "key" to all North American bryophyte genera. Last updated Jan. 2010. This "key" is targeted toward those who have had at least some beginner training. It starts with matching your specimen to a group, and then going to a set of choices within that group. The mosses are in web format, liverworts and hornworts are available in MS Word or PDF formats
Update to the Santa Cruz County Moss Catalog by Ken Kellman
Moss Character Chart by Ken Kellman
This spreadsheet was designed for use in an intermediate bryology class, and is useful for generic recognition. It could be the basis for a random access key. It will work best in Central California, but could easily be expanded to work elsewhere. Contact Ken to get the original spreadsheet for adaptation to your area.
Key to the Subulate Leaved Mosses of the Central Coast of California by Ken Kellman
This key works across the subulate leaved genera, including Dicranella, Ditrichum, Pleuridium etc. It works pretty well, but still needs tuning.
Generic Treatments
Grimmia
Key to North American Grimmias organized by subgenera by Roxanne Hastings of the Royal Alberta Museum, Canada
Grimmia is a taxonomically contentious genus. Once Schistidium and a couple other smaller genera were removed, there remained 4 subgroups that for the most part are morphologically consistent. However, much of the bryological community has resisted formal recognition of these groups as genera or even subgenera, because there are very many plants that either don't fit anywhere in this scheme, or are intermediate between two groups. Nonetheless, if we put the systematics aside, and use these groups as tools to break up the genus (which has somewhere between 45-50 species in N.A.) into bite sized pieces, identification of the plant in our hands is much easier. This key gives you the tool to place your plant in one of these groups, and then keys out each group. Roxanne was one of the co-authors of the BFNA treatment. This is a very useful alternative to the BFNA key.
Racomitrium s.l.
Racomitrioideae of Oregon by David Wagner
This is a wonderful illustrated key written to take full advantage of the computer. Each option in a couplet is accompanied by a microphotograph that makes the choice straightforward. Another great feature is the trail of bread crumbs that track your progress through the key, making it easy to go back to an early branch. Even though the work focuses on Oregon, the key works very well throughout the Pacific Northwest.
Syntrichia
A Synopsis of Recent Literature on the Genus Syntrichia in the Northern Hemisphere by Ken Kellman
Syntrichia is a big problem genus, and this paper does not solve the problem. What it does do is gather all of the literature pertaining to species described in the Northern Hemisphere, and write a key to all of those species. In North America particularly, you will still find numerous specimens that do not match any known plant. Sorting out this mess is going to take someone with more patience and time than I am willing to spend!.
Plagiotheciaceae
Plagiotheciaceae character chart Plagiotheciaceae keys by Diane Lucas
Years ago, Plagiothecium was a very large and poorly defined genus. In 1969, Bob Ireland split it up into several genera that at first glance also seem confusing. These charts and keys sort out all of the important characters. Like all difficult groups, once you can separate them out into the smaller components, your work is much easier. The chart separates the family into genera with a spreadsheet approach, and the keys are dichotomous, with charts for each genus added at the bottom. These charts will mostly benefit bryologists in the east.
Bryophyte Flora of North America, Vol 3 The generic treatments to be collated in the as yet unpublished third volume, are an invaluable resource. There are fewer completed treatments than in the second moss volume, but it is worth checking out.
Annotated key to California Liverworts and Hornworts by Alan Whittemore. These keys cover the same territory as Doyle and Stotler. But a second key can often shed light on a problem identification. I used these keys when I first started out, long before Doyle and Stotler became available. Here is his latest version (Sept. 2009)
A Perspective Oriented Guide to the Identification of North American Bryophytes by Malcom Sargent and Diane Lucas. A non-dichotomous "key" to all North American bryophyte genera. Last updated Jan. 2010. This "key" is targeted toward those who have had at least some beginner training. It starts with matching your specimen to a group, and then going to a set of choices within that group. The mosses are in web format, liverworts and hornworts are available in MS Word or PDF formats
Difficult Morphological Characters
Hydroids A pictorial explanation of the recognition of hydroids in costal and moss stems (otherwise known as a central strand) cross sections
BFNA Vol 27 Generic Index Sized to fit in the very back cover of the book. I have mine glued there covering the map that is duplicated in the front of the book.
Crum & Anderson Generic Index Same as above.
Damsholt's Nordic Liverworts and Hornworts Generic Index Ditto. Sent along by Diane Lucas
Generic index to Paton's Liverwort Flora of the British Isles Ditto. Sent along by Diane Lucas