Anomalous cryptogams: the Huntington Botanical Garden's humid greenhouses (I say humid because it also has dry ones for growing succulents) contain large quantities of accidentally imported exotic cryptogams. Most of these are mosses, and some of the mosses are pretty weird-looking (here is the weirdest-looking one, moss biologists take note), but I disprefer mosses as study organisms (to be fair all organisms are cool, more or less) so they shall not be discussed in detail here. Anyways, it's doubtless that a lot of the cryptogams in there have never been documented in California before I did so, but I'm even more depressed than before so I'll keep things short [edit: I failed to keep things short because it is in my nature to be verbose, oh well whatever]. Several species of thriving indoors lichens in there. Given that lichens are not generally supposed by lichen biologists to survive unsterilized greenhouse care, this is significant news (although I don't doubt that easily indoor-culturable lichens are commoner than the scientific field as a whole currently believes). There are at least four morphospecies of hitchhiking Marchantiophyta in there too (probably not more than that; I am very thorough and like I said most of the cryptogams are mosses). One morphospecies is so tiny I can barely see it even on my macro cam; you can see it attached to the bigger one in the pic above. I shall not discuss it further because it's hard to discuss something one is largely unable to perceive. One morphospecies is thalloid and appears to be a common weedy Marchantia, but is very sparse (found less than 5 ramets in the carnivorous plant bog). The other two morphospp. are heavily corticolous (dominant on certain trunks, large branches, and large logs, occurring sporadically on thin branches, seemingly outcompeted by mosses on soil and most rocks) and are this roundleaf one (Lejeuneaceae?) and one (pictured above) that has the toothed appearance of Geocalyx/Lophocolea. I have taken samples of roundleaf and lophocoleoid with the intent of getting them IDed as they are almost surely undocumented in California (I have some academia connections with the Huntington, though unfortunately not enough to be of appreciable use to me). Both my current roundleafs and lophocoleoids have survived long periods in my culture cup (the roundleaf in the linked post died because it was too dry and/or too wet) but are getting pale from not enough lighting. I need a better grow space. Bad pic of a crust lichen (on orchid bark mount) below. I did not take any lichen samples because I don't want to bite off more than I can chew. By the way the recent greenhouse quarantine lockdown for veronicellids they did clearly wasn't very good at defaunating the place, an acquaintance informs me there are still several different weird ants in there and I wouldn't be surprised if I saw some live veronicellids still inside. I've certainly seen the occasional mealybug (although the hemipterans were not at visibly high densities, as was the case the last time I visited before quarantine).
Note 2 self: both wort samples in cup from thing labelled Sauraia madrensis, study 4 future: does leaf tooth of lophocoleoid increase evaporation and thus allow CO2 uptake when otherwise too wet to absorb gases correctly? How does niche stratify with lejeune thing?
Cuscuta subinclusa: specimen at my residence has been ailing due to nightshade-eating caterpillars having defoliated its host. It's been a while now, and the nightshade leaves are back, but the dodder is still ailing because it prefers to grow up or sideways and has an aversion to growing down (where most of the leaves are). I've sprouted some potatoes but the sprouts aren't tall enough for the dodder to easily attach yet, in the meantime I've fed it a weedy daisy of some sort (not sure whether this will actually work, because the lace-like leaves of the daisy appear to confuse it). Also, I infested an invasive peppertree at a local church with it (first I got it to parasitize a succulent so it wouldn't dehydrate to death when tied to the tree, I feel clever). To be fair, peppertrees don't seem to be making any surviving feral offspring in my area, but to be fair peppertrees are poor quality invertebrate habitat. I'm impatient to see the church dodder feed some bugs. You might want to stop reading now, the rest of this post is not particularly important. Have I mentioned the tomato story on here, though? I probably should if I haven't (it's a neat story) but I'm more depressed than usual today. Although what constitutes "usual" has also been getting worse as my life in general has been going more and more downhill.
Haplodesmidae(?): I don't want to talk about them because Reasons. No interesting behaviors noted, but the culture appears to contain both sexes (am seeing offspring making probable mating attempts with F0 female).
Sphaerocarpos: doing nothing interesting. I have successfully re-isolated a cutting in a cup seemingly free of mosses and algae. Not sure how mosses/algae stay out of the cup, given that I walk past it constantly (and spores could likely enter with tap water or from my clothes), but somehow they're not growing in there.
Asterella californica: just got a fresh batch of these a day or three ago for the upcoming experiment (which proves more and more delayed due to various setbacks), I have carefully handpicked females with tetralobate, symmetrical fruiting bodies as I suspect these are most genetically healthy (pentalobates, trilobates, etc. may result from failed ontogenic canalization as in Linanthus). Interestingly, although most specimens I encountered in the field had tetralobate ones the vast majority were more or less lopsided. Weak selective pressures? Evolutionary constraints? Just stressed from climate change or whatever? Who knows! Anyways I found a pentalobate that was so malformed it was bilaterally and not radially symmetrical (there was also a six-lobed one near it and the tetralobates in the vicinity were more teratological-looking than usual too).
Assorted small esoteric annual wildflowers: mostly cotyledons of Crassula connata. Not getting enough sun. Limited space, difficult to give them proper care. I've No interesting behaviors noted.
Iridescent gametophyte: nothing interesting to report. Still thriving. Their tolerance of low light makes algal prevention easy.
Noniridescent cordate gametophyte: still slowly declining, seemingly still from cyanobacterial allelopathy. Attempts to transplant fragments onto fresh soil have been repeatedly met with death of fragment.
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