Long story short: this specimen was collected around (if not at) the same time (last spring) as the ones in the third attempt. All specimens from said third attempt are now dead; the cause of death appears to be poor ventilation. When not dormant, many cryptogams (even tropical ones, oddly) suffer heat stress around 80 degrees Fahrenheit. The common aquarists' moss Fontinalis antipyretica is known to turn brown at 68°F, for example. And 80 fahrens is a pretty comfortable temperature for me, so it's possible for me to be shivering and sneezing at the exact same temperatures that a moss or lichen is being scalded to death at. Some cryptogams solve the heat problem through evaporative cooling, and in a poorly ventilated moist container evaporative cooling is barely possible. I could not dare ventilate mine because whenever I did so sciarid larvae ate them. Yeah.
Anyways, this Asterella specimen was originally sitting around dormant in my bedroom as a spare, just in case the ones in attempt 3 died. And die they did. But the sciarids have naturally died off too so I un-dehydrated my spare yesterday.
Here's a pic of the rarely-seen underside! Note the herringbone pattern of its various appendages. It's not too obvious in this photo (all my more dramatic photos of the herringboning are blurry).
I also hasten to add that a few months ago I got myself a specialized plant-growing light and that my A. californica is its current user! Now I'll no longer have to worry about my dim win- well, actually, I still have to worry about the dim windows. My fern gametophyte cultures all still have tons of annoying mites in them and for that reason I'm unwilling to put them under the light with the Asterella; we've discussed below how the mites in question appear capable of dispersing themselves (and unwanted spores) to nearby containers. With that being said, I recently discovered the iridescent ones can grow on mite-unfriendly surfaces like roughened plastic, so maybe I'll acquire a mite-free fern culture pretty soon.
