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| 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.
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| Lunularia cruciata (note gemma cups) |
Current progress
I currently have a single specimen of Asterella californica.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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.
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| 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).
