save the Blue Tier
tasmanian liverworts - riccardia
riccardia 261018B
1. A tiny Riccardia from the Blue Tier
This is by far the smallest Riccardia we have encountered on the Blue Tier. The thalli is barely visible to the naked eye and appears more like a coating on the surface of the rotting wood substrate. In pix 3 the thallus is less than 100 um wide.
There is no current key for the genus - latest available is that of Brown & Braggins from 1989 which make no mention of such a small species. One of their smallest would be R. umida (p. 38) which has a width of 225-310 um.
 2. thallus with cap valves |
 3. thallus |
 4. capsule valves |
Literature
Brown EA & Braggins JE A Revision of the genus Riccardia
S.F. Gray in the New Zealand with notes on the
genus Aneura Dum. Journ. Hattori Bot. Lab. No. 66:
1-132 (June 1989)