Common Mosses, Liverworts, and Lichens of Ohio: A Visual Guide – A field companion for the cryptogam naturalist

Abstract

Robert Klips’ book, Common Mosses, Liverworts, and Lichens of Ohio: A Visual Guide, is a product of a collaborative effort amongst the bryologists and lichenologists of the Ohio Moss & Lichen Association (OMLA). Though Klips is the only author of the book, OMLA members contributed some illustrations, feedback, and supplying poetry folded between the chapters. The book is intended primarily for aspirant cryptogam naturalists and aims to inspire curiosity in readers. By providing a ‘‘starter set’’ of cryptogams, this book pushes them to ‘‘dig deeper using microscopes and more technical manuals.’’ The spectacular macro-photography truly captures the complexity of the various organisms included, and the ecological roles they serve. Klips uses these photos to explain technical terms and concepts, highlighting key differences in leaf morphology, habitat utilization, reproductive structures such as sporangia and gametangia, and other details pertinent to cryptogram identification. The first chapter of the book provides an overview of mosses, liverworts, hornworts, and lichens. In this section, Klips emphasizes the ecology of bryophytes and lichens, describing how to find them, where they grow and how they survive, and their importance in the ecology of other organisms. Book chapters dedicated to the mosses are organized by morphology and include treatments for 106 of the more than 400 species of mosses in Ohio (Andreas 2011). The moss species accounts are divided into ten chapters – four chapters dedicated to acrocarps (the ‘‘cushion mosses’’), three chapters dedicated to pleurocarps (the ‘‘carpet mosses’’) and three chapters dedicated to the ‘‘weird ones’’ that are so different from the rest that they do not fall into either category. The sections are further broken down by leaf features. The acrocarps are separated by leaf shape (hairlike, lance-shaped, tongue-shaped, broad), the pleurocarps are separated by costa and leaf shape (sickle-shape, costate, ecostate), and the others are split into three groups (Flat Fissidens and Friends, Haircap Mosses, Sphagnum Mosses). Ultimately, Klips spends one chapter divided into ten sections discussing how to identify mosses. Thirty-one taxonomic treatments of the approximate 100 liverwort species that have been recorded in Ohio are included in this book (OMLA). Three species of hornworts are addressed in this section, though they are not included in the taxonomic treatments. The liverworts are divided into fourteen different groups representing ‘‘growth form categories helpful in identification,’’ such as ‘‘leafy liverworts with toothed leaves and succubous insertion,’’ which is consistent with grouping schemas in scientific literature. According to the OMLA website, there are more than 200 species of lichen in Ohio, 101 of which are included in the book (OMLA). Like the mosses, Klips takes great care to discuss the procedures required to accurately