My god they grow so fast

 

My Sphaerocarpos culture currently consists of two (#2 is not shown) specimens! They were less than a cm long when I fragmented them off the wild plant but now they are both reaching adult size!

No wonder they're ephemerals in the wild.

In which I (among other things) suddenly begin to enjoy seafood

 Hiiiiii! Long time no talk! Though admittedly almost nothing has happened in the past months, so it's not like I had anything to say.

First: Sphaerocarpos! As I mentioned in my last post, I have found a wild colony. After numerous mishaps involving desiccation (one particularly amusing incident involved the sample pictured above somehow drying out and dying while in a sealed cup) I have finally established a culture. More on them later.

I also keep neglecting to mention this moss, which has not visibly grown at all since I found it last June. It appears to be a hydrophilous specialist as I have never seen it away from leaking water and seem to have only seen it twice ever (perhaps it is Didymodon tophaceus).

Unfortunately, a few days ago its top rapidly died. I assume that being suddenly moved to bright indirect light harmed it (yeah, mosses have been known to be sunburned by even weak light). In the wild it was in a place with direct sun but I had been keeping it shaded for a long time, so perhaps it had desynthesized its anti-sunburn defenses in the shade and could not resynthesize them rapidly enough.

You may note the green thing to its left. That is a gametophyte (fern it seems) of unknown origin. It probably arrived in my garden soil bag as an unintentionally imported spore, because the USDA is terrible at its job. Hopefully it will produce a sporophyte one day. Although given that there is only one of it in the cup I'm not optimistic.

I also went on a rather exciting shopping trip yesterday! I found several large marine algae as bycatch in the snail tank. Unfortunately pretty much all the snails were quite dead (in addition to being unethical, I'm also pretty sure it violates several food sanitation laws). Here you can see a bleached coralline alga and some sort of buoy-possessing seaweed. If I get a marine tank and learn how to disinfect live algae I'm going to fill it with rescued bycatch from the seafood tanks.

Also a number of the store fruits were heavily infested with scale insects. Did I mention the USDA was terrible at its job?

Anyways, I also brought home an unidentifiable gametophyte! It was growing as a weed in one of the store flowerpots so I took it home for free. It was neither of the two thalloid marchantiophytes that are supposed to be greenhouse pests (Lunularia cruciata, Marchantia polymorpha), so I suspect it may be an undiscovered invasive. Hopefully I can culture it to a size where it's less unIDable.

I accidentally raise a bunch of puffy worms

A month ago I found fourteen starving Galgula partita caterpillars on a weedy Oxalis in my yard. The former had completely defoliated the latter. 

I keep promising myself "no more pet bugs", but, well, the plight of the specimens tugged at my heartstrings and I couldn't resist taking them home. Also, before you ask, I could not ascertain the adaptive value of their puffiness. They never seemed to use their bulges for anything and were honestly quite boring to watch (pretty much all they did was eat and walk around).

Anyways, eleven successfully pupated and turned into adults (all of which I released). The other three died from assorted mysterious reasons in case you're wondering. No parasitoids emerged.

Here is an adult!

I wanted to get more adult pics to show off their extreme color polymorphism, but, well, they were very uncooperative. The pics I do have are either blurry or depict my fingers (for aesthetic reasons I dislike having visible body parts onscreen), so I'm not posting them here. Also I'm too lazy to retype my rearing tips so here you go.

Unrelated news:

- My Asterella californica specimen was killed in an accident several months ago. It wasn't caused by bad care, the accident was just an annoying random event.

- I just found another colony of Sphaerocarpos!

At long last, a Coniontis recording

I caught a Coniontis on the sidewalk several days ago and successfully filmed its vibration behavior last night! After said recording it was released.

Being the first person ever to document Coniontis vibrations on camera sure feels nice!

Here is the video:

More assorted news

 

I photographed the fully macropterous form of Gryllodes sigillatus a few days ago! Unlike most of the "rare" specimens I encounter, it is genuinely rare and not merely underdocumented-but-common. I kept seeing full macropters in my yard but failed to catch any until today (they kept jumping off). I managed to catch this one mainly because it barely jumped and seemed slightly weak (I felt bad for it, so I fed it a rice blob before releasing it).

I also managed to photo a semi-macropterous female (also rare) a while before this. Not posting my pics of it here, since they were of poor quality, but it looked just like a full macropter lacking the long needle-shaped hindwings. Its forewings were the same length as those on the full macropter though. 

Neither the semi-macropter nor full macropters ever used their wings in my presence by the way.

On an unrelated note, I made another trip to the Californian coast in hopes of finding some Xanthoria parietina. Once again I did not see a single foliose lichen of any sort; the whole place was coated in generic range/yellow/black/white crust lichens just like last time. Here is a pretty pic I took there though!

I go to AZ

(the view outside my hotel)

Here are some pics from my recent trip to Arizona! Sadly the trip itself was a disappointment - I came back emptyhanded because I saw nothing I wanted to take home. In fact, the trails I looked in were completely devoid of Marchantiophyta. I was also bored the whole time because I don't enjoy sightseeing very much.

Red Rock State Park:

Miller Visitor Center

Argia ludens male (these were abundant)

Unidentified skipper thingy

Eleodes longicollis

(who knew river mud could be so pretty)

Eleodes obscura sulcipennis

A member of the Stenomorpha marginata group; sadly dead

Miscellaneous pics:

I found this Polyphylla specimen sleeping in the open on an urban wall; it was probably unable to move to a safer location because nighttime light pollution (read: attraction to lamps) had rendered it too confused to do so. It sat on my arm unrestrained for the rest of the day since it was too drowsy to flee. I could not find a safe place to release it before night came, and once it was dark the scarab woke up and panicked all night (it presumably has a psychological need for flight). Fortunately I found a suitable release location the next morning.

(yes the lichens really were this color)

Solanaceae, presumably

(this was the only place I visited that didn't have reddish dirt)

Wild Shelfordella lateralis male (seemingly dying of pesticides)

Lygaeus

Sadly, none of these were Xanthoria parietina

Xanthoria or bust

As some of you know, I have been trying to get my hands on and culture a live specimen of Xanthoria parietina for several years now. This is because it has a combination of traits which makes it very useful, including:

- relatively rapid growth (reportedly up to 7 mm per yr, although this is still far slower than rates reported for Herpothallon/Cryptothecia)

- strong sun/dehydration tolerance

- ability to detoxify pollutants and use them as fertilizer

- large size (easier to manipulate and photograph)

- ability to grow on a wide variety of substrates, including plastic

- calciphily (it won't throw fits and die if given hard water)

- ability to tolerate lawn sprinklers (many lichens become injured if rehydration from a dry state is not preceded by a slow, gradual air humidity increase; sprinkler tolerance means that it can survive/grow even when no such gradual increase is present)

Unfortunately, it does not grow anywhere near me, which is why I have not acquired one yet. My attempts to get acquaintances to mail me some have also been wildly unsuccessful. So a few days ago I went on a trip to the coast, as it is often associated with coastal habitats*.

...I did not see a single foliose/fruticose lichen, although orange/yellow dot lichens and intertidal organisms were abundant. Even the ancient Spanish mission I visited (see pic above) had a rather pitiful lichen flora. Also, despite the abundant eye candy I was sad the whole time, as I do not believe in vacationing for sightseeing's sake.

I can't post about only my successes, can I? That would be biased and perhaps dishonest. Maybe you'll enjoy the eye candy more than I did. Here's an urchin I found on the beach:

Mesocentrotus franciscanus

*X. parietina seems to require salt to survive. However, it is not aquatic (it drowns if kept too wet) and in fact I believe its salt requirement is actually quite low. According to the literature, aerosolized salt from ocean breezes appears adequate for its needs (at least one paper also suggests that road salt may cause it to appear in non-coastal regions). So I imagine that the salt thing should not be too problematic for me if I acquire a specimen.

Cotinis adults are in season!

 I saw my first C. mutabilis of the year today! Unfortunately, I seem to have severely injured it by accident. It was dangerously close to flying into plastic and then dying of plastic entanglement, so I grabbed it and threw it away. For some reason it did not fly when thrown, and upon landing several of its tarsi had seemingly lost the ability to flex/bend. I was definitely not expecting that to happen, as healthy specimens do not generally refuse flight when thrown.

At least I compensated it with free brunch afterwards? It still seemed possibly moribund though. Oh dear.

Asterella gets fifteen minutes of fame

The Los Angeles Times featured me briefly on their plant Instagram! By the way, the specimen is still dormant because I am too sad (and afraid of molds) to rehydrate it.

Fun lichen paper

 https://www.researchgate.net/publication/231809006_Growth_from_the_Centre_in_an_Umbilicate_Lichen

This isn't a particularly useful paper, but its description of how Lasallia pustules emerge and migrate from the thallus center like soap bubbles being blown by a machine is quite sublime and oddly amusing.

4/20 boring update

Asterella is dried up and thus dormant, because I got sick of having moldy wet dirt in my house. Sphaerocarpos is dead again.

I'm not sure I like dirt any more

The cactus potting soil I stored dry and seemingly in clean conditions for months began emitting a faint moldy odor as soon as I rehydrated it. The gravel in the Asterella californica cup has also developed a similarly mild but unpleasant odor over the past few months. Intriguingly the dead mushy parts of the Asterella itself have no visible or smellable microbial presence; I suspect its flesh contains natural antibiotics. Ironically, the dirt in the Sphaerocarpos jar had a pleasant nutty smell and no mold (despite being in an airtight humid container) when the Sphaerocarpos in it were still thriving. The nutty smell is gone now that the sphaers are decaying, of course, but I'm surprised the pleasant scent lasted for weeks under sopping wet conditions.

Also I got some new Sphaerocarpos to replace the dead ones. I touched the new ones with my hands after washing them in hard water, because I had no access to soft water at the time, and I suspect the calcareous residues from my hands may kill them eventually. So far it is still alive though.

Anyways, despite being in microbe-infested dirt, the Asterella seems to have increased its sprout size by a few more millimeters! I can't wait for the pandemic to end so I can give it a thorough sanitization and acquire some dirt that won't mold.

4/10 update

Sphaerocarpos turned to slime. I suspect I used tap water w too many chems.

Asterella californica became subtly but increasingly brown around its growing point, I let it dry out one too many times because of absentmindedness and misery. Fortunately I imagine it may recover from this if I keep it damp long enough.

4/5 hasty plant update

 

Asterella californica: As usual I couldn't be bothered to take a nonblurry photo, so here is an ugly one! If you look carefully, you can see that green lobes are growing around the brown orb in the center. I highly doubt the lobes will grow into a new orb; I imagine they'll grow into new "leaves". I am glad that it is capable of surviving on hard water! Quite exciting.

Sphaerocarpos: v probably still growing rapidly. Have not checked it.

Physciella chloantha: I acquired some more. It better not die.

Mosses: Tired. Unmotivated. I dumped all of them (including the uninvited freebies from the Asterella cup) into a small container and let it dry out.  Maybe I'll rehydrate the thing when I am less tired.

Sphaerocarpos update 3/17

All of my Sphaerocarpos specimens have grown very rapidly!

Here is a pic of one. As you can see, it is no longer yellow. Evidently, being moved to a brighter place has increased its health. It's not very obvious in the pic, but my specimens have also decreased the size of their sexual balloons and covered themselves in a network of green threads (I believe they are protonemata, though possibly of mosses). Their thalli are also now no longer tightly appressed to the ground, instead fanning out into the air in all directions. The plants now look like corals covered in spider gossamer.

The balloon shrinkage was not surprising - after all I'd already read long ago that female Sphaerocarpos rapidly reduce their balloon mass and both sexes become unnaturally healthy/fastgrowing when in captivity.

I wish I was capable of such phenotypic plasticity. Unnatural health is so cool...

Nyctoporis survived!

My contact reports that all eighteen Nyctoporis carinata larvae showed up alive and well despite the coldness of the post office.

Also this is unrelated but most of the mosses in my cup have been looking increasingly pallid. I assume my recent overwatering tendency has been harming them. The Asterella californica specimen, on the other hand, seems to be doing well and appears to be very slowly making some new branches. I am not sure whether the Asterella is actually growing, but it certainly seems to be.

No more nyctopores

 I have sent away all my Nyctoporis carinata larvae! I now have no captive arthropods. Here are some pics of one shortly before sending it off in the mail. By the way, several died since my last count, so instead of 21 there are now 18. Intriguingly, some of the most small and/or injured larvae survived.

Here is a blurry vid of their defensive flopping and jerky gait. In dirtless containers they can start chain reactions of increasingly panicked flopping when one larva accidentally collides with another. Interestingly large larvae barely engage in peristalsis when they walk, unlike small larvae.

Sphaerocarpos update 3/4

 Still alive but concerningly somewhat yellowish. Moved it to brighter area today in hopes of de-yellowing it.

Asterella/moss update 3/1

 I accidentally let them dry out again last night. Upon rehydration the Asterella was still green but its "orb" had turned brown. The mosses still seem fine.

Asterella/moss update 2/27

 The entire rear end of my Asterella californica specimen has shrivelled into a blackish mess! This is not surprising. I absentmindedly let the thing dry out a few days ago because I was tired. And (if my sources are correct) only the front end of an Asterella specimen is naturally supposed to survive drought. It probably has something to do with internal resource optimization or something.

The mosses were none the worse for wear though. They folded up when it was dry and then unfurled after rehydration without suffering visible damage.

Asterella/moss update 2/24

 

The Asterella californica has continued to show little change but more mosses have been appearing in both cups! They're hard to see so click to zoom.

Minor cryptogam updates

The Asterella californica thallus has not done much, although its front end may have been slightly greener and its side margins may have become slightly more rotten.

However two moss rosettes have shown up uninvited in its cup. I'll let them stay for now.

In the moss-only cup, the smaller of the two moss morphospecies present has produced a third rosette! It had two rosettes originally.

The Sphaerocarpos is now in a sealed jar, Wardian case style. Hopefully this will eliminate the need for me to water it. When it was in an open topped jar it got coated with mud every time I added water, which was probably not very good for it. 

By the way the sealed jar now contains more than one Sphaerocarpos female because I planted some new ones in there today.

In pursuit of marchantiophytes

 

Lunularia cruciata (with neon mosses) at edge of lawn

Introduction

As some of you may know, unfavorable external circumstances have forced me to put my lichen cultivation research on hiatus for now. I've been playing with marchantiophytes in the meantime. Many of them look just like lichens (although many others look like mosses) and are as ecologically understudied as lichens. They are also often easier to cultivate than lichens. 

I've found roughly half a dozen taxa in my area so far:

- Lunularia cruciata, a synanthropic weed from Europe. Instantly identifiable when it has crescent-shaped gemma cups. The majority of marchantiophytes in urban areas here seem to be Lunularia, but it seems very incompetent at being "invasive"; it spreads almost exclusively via gemmae and fission because its sexual phase is rare, and gemmae are much less efficient at dispersal than spores (its individual gemmae are easily visible to the unaided eye and their relatively large size makes them heavier than spores). It also has significant trouble outcompeting lawn grass and seems somewhat rarer than stereotypical flowering weeds like dandelions and Oxalis. I'm pretty sure that the main reason Lunularia invades and causes economic damage in nurseries is because it is unintentionally imported in the soil of potted plants, and because employees splash its gemmae long distances when watering said potted plants.

- Marchantia polymorpha, another synanthropic weed; it is a severe pest in some parts of the planet (it produces lightweight spores often and presumably thus disperses more efficiently than Lunularia), but I've only seen a single colony here. Presumably Lunularia outcompetes it in my area.

- Sphaerocarpos, a synanthropic but nonweedy (if we define "nonweedy" here as "causes no agricultural, horticultural, economic, or ecosystemic harm") native wort; its life history is very strange. It is an extremophilous specialist of seasonally dry habitats but is very short-lived in the wild, because only its spores survive droughts. It is also very sexually dimorphic; females have distinctive swollen balloons and are much larger and hardier than the tiny males. In captivity, however, females become immortal-ish as long as they are kept healthy and permanently wet. Their balloons also shrink in captive conditions for some reason.

- Asterella californica, a non-urban native taxon specialized for drought tolerance. Unlike Sphaerocarpos, the plants become dormant during droughts instead of fully dying.

- Fossombronia(?), a very small non-urban native taxon. Plants become nonfatally dormant during droughts.

- Riccia trichocarpa(?), non-urban. Not much is known about its ecology, but considering that it sometimes co-occurs with the Fossombronia(?) presumably its habits are similar.

Lunularia cruciata (note gemma cups)

Current progress

I currently have a single specimen of Asterella californica. 

A. californica and mosses in cup

So far, not much has happened. Its leading edges died and rotted a bit; I'm not sure whether this was from temporary transplantation stress or because I am caring for it improperly. I have not found any mention of nonsterile cultivation instructions for it online, as its indoors ecology is very poorly studied; however, several research papers I read mentioned that under sterile conditions it can be kept healthy when perpetually wet (despite the fact that it spends most of its life in the wild dormant and dry). I am keeping it permanently damp (but not sopping wet) in a container of sandy native soil, and am watering with hard water (neutral distilled was my first choice, as many liverworts are sensitive to soil pH and I don't know its pH preference; I was unable to acquire enough neutral water for COVID reasons though).

In any case, it has already survived eight days in captivity, and is still largely healthy-looking. I suspect it may even have grown slightly. Two dicot angiosperms have popped up in its container already. I deleted both of the seedlings, since local native angiosperms tend to be large bushes/subshrubs and I cannot afford to raise an indoors shrub. Also, the mosses in the photo have all been moved to a separate container. None of said mosses has visibly grown yet.

Fossombronia(?)

I collected some Fossombronia(?) too, but because I had a shortage of clean native dirt I kept it in an empty container with only enough dirt to cover its "roots". It turned noticeably yellowish at the edges after a few days and I threw it out before it had the chance to die. Presumably this was because I did not water it properly. The Asterella has prominent air pores, and if my understanding of physics is correct, the bubbles trapped inside air pores allow taxa possessing the pores to respirate even during heavy rains. Fossombronia is known to lack air pores, and I may have overwatered my specimens a few times, presumably causing damage to their photosynthetic apparatus. Interestingly, my Fossombronia(?) specimens were dark green when very soggy and neon green when lightly damp; at least some neon green mosses turn dark green when soggy too. 

Several species of Fossombronia have been kept in Columbia University's greenhouse on dirt, and it seems that a very small number of exotic plant hobbyists have it growing in their terrariums. But no one on the internet seems to mention the exact cultivation protocols for it - evidently fossombs are another one of those plants with an insufficently studied life history. I imagine that whatever species mine is will not be too hard to grow as long as I make sure it isn't overhydrated. But since I have no information on its pH preferences, I guess I'll have to find out via trial and error. 

Sphaerocarpos and Lunularia cruciata at the edge of a lawn

I also currently have a female specimen of Sphaerocarpos in a jar with some microwaved dirt from its habitat. Sphaerocarpos females of several (perhaps all) species are very easy to keep in captivity under nonsterile conditions (they reproduce asexually) and can even be put into Wardian cases, according to this research paper, but it is another taxon that is rarely grown even by researchers. However, S. texanus, which is probably the species I have (it is the most commonly seen member of its genus, and is known to be highly synanthropic), is known to prefer soils with a non-calcareous or neutral pH. I'm saving what little non-hard water I have for watering it.

I believe I've seen at least one Sphaerocarpos male in the urban wild, and am attempting to start a clonal male colony (males can reproduce asexually too; however, because they are weak and small, in captivity female conspecifics may eventually outcompete and kill them). However, I have not had much luck and currently do not have any captive males. To be honest, I'm not sure I can safely afford to keep a culture of males. Since males do not tolerate Wardian cases, and open topped jars have higher rates of water evaporation, and I have had great difficulty purchasing distilled water that lacks hardwater minerals, and because the pandemic currently exists, culturing males will almost undoubtedly be quite painful at the current moment.

Marchantia polymorpha

Note that I am not culturing Marchantia polymorpha or Lunularia cruciata, have not grown it in the past, and do not intend to do so any time in the near future. The latter of the two seems surprisingly understudied despite its weediness though; in the very distant future I may (or may not) attempt to grow it with Sphaerocarpos or native mosses as an experiment, because outdoors it seems that Lunularia regularly coexists with native seedless plants without destroying their populations. 

By the way, Moss Grower's Handbook gives instructions on maintaining both M. polymorpha and L. cruciata indoors in its first chapter; it does not mention their pH preferences, but I have seen both of them growing in soils being watered with hard water (so evidently they do not die in alkaline environments).

Some art

 

Here are a bunch of graphic design things I drew some time ago! The first is a profile pic I produced for the developer of Dronefly, an online utility bot. Orchidarium Productions doesn't exist though; I made its logo for fun as practice for my art skills. Admittedly I need more practice.

...Amusingly, someone later sent me a pic of Dronefly in Minecraft. They hollowed it out and filled it with live bees. I'm a little embarrassed the replica propeller is bicolored though, the different shades of gray in the original were supposed to be different lighting angles. Maybe I need better lighting depiction skills.