Specimen #2: Leucobryum albidum

Collection #: 2

Scientific Name: Leucobryum albidum

Phylum: Bryophyta; Bryopsida

Order: Dicranales

Family: Leucobryaceae

Common Name: white moss

Location: the Triangle Lake area

Habitat: Wet area by the side of the boardwalk

Date of collecting: September 10th

Collector: Cornelia

Notes: very small plants with whitish green leaves

How did I key this out:

Fig.1 Group picture with size                                                                       Fig.2 Single plant

Fig.3 Picture of a single leaf

Since this is a really tiny type of plants (Fig.1), I picked out a single plant (Fig.2) to check the growth form of it. It might be a little bit confusing, but since there's not really long trailed stems or widely angled branches, I would say that it is the acrocarp growth form. (Later on when you get more used to the mosses, you will actually be able to tell as soon as you see a plant like this--the furry little whitish green groups of mosses are always Leucobryum.)From the leaf picture (Fig.3) we could see that this specimen is with lance-shaped leaves without a midrib. By knowing these features, we could now go to the key: KEY II: Acrocarps with Lance-shaped Leaves. (Again, later on when you are more familiar with the mosses, you will know that with the whitish color, acrocarp growth form and lance-shaped leaves without midrib all together, it can only be the Leucobryum. All other acrocarp plants with lance-shaped leaves have midribs.)

The following steps is how I went through the keys:
1. (A) Plants gray or whitish green (dry) to light green (wet) (see fig.1 for this fact.); shoots very densely packed together forming domed mounds (see fig.2 for this fact.); leaves tubular in upper half and seemingly without midrib. (See fig.3 and fig.4 for this fact.) (2)
2. (B) Stems <1 cm tall; leaves 2-4 mm long; (Combine fig.1 and fig.2 to figure the size of the stem and leaves.) often with capsules. (Leucobryum albidum, P123)

 Fig.4 Cell structure

Description of the species:
A smaller species more common in the southern part of our range; less than 1 cm tall, with leaves only 2-4 mm long. Clumps are sometimes not as dense and mounded.

Collecting and keying story:

As you can see, it is really easy to key this thing out--only 2 steps. In real life, this type of moss looks like a cute, small, furry white animal curling on the ground. They were really cute by all means and I really enjoyed collecting a sample of these. My specimen #3 (collected August 30th at Camp Asbury) is also a Leucobryum, but was a bigger species. As I mentioned in the general keying information before the keying steps, these mosses are very easy to distinguish as soon as you see them.



Phylum, order and family name cited from:
http://explorer.natureserve.org/servlet/NatureServe?searchName=Leucobryum+albidum

Keys cited from:

  Common Mosses of the Northeast and Appalachians by Karl B. McKnight, Joseph R. Rohrer, Kirsten McKnight Ward and Warren J. Perdrizet. This book is in the series of the Princeton Field Guides and was published by Princeton University Press with copyright @ 2013.