Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 20 No. 1 The Quarterly Newsletter Winter 2010 For Garamond Italic, use Garamond Checklist of the Bryophytes of Long Island Eric C. Morgan1, Jon A. Borysiewicz1 and Jon A. Sperling2 True Type, ITALIC. 1Bartlett Arboretum Herbarium, 151 Brookdale Rd., Stamford, CT 06903 2Queens College Biology Dept., 65-30 Kissena Blvd, Flushing, NY 11367 The bryophytes, commonly known as hornworts, liverworts name. With only a handful of hornwort species in the region, an and mosses, are non-flowering plants that are dispersed by spores amateur bryologist can easily learn to recognize these plants. as opposed to seeds, and can be found in a tremendous array Liverworts are a large group which can be separated from of habitats, often with impressive diversity and abundance. mosses by their absence of leaves, or if leaves are present, by While modern cladistics has separated the bryophytes into three the arrangement of those leaves. Leafy liverworts have leaves groups, the Anthoceratophyta or hornworts, the Hepaticophyta arranged in two or three rows, usually on creeping stems, while or liverworts, and the Bryophyta or mosses, for the text of this mosses have their leaves spirally arranged with few exceptions. paper the term bryophyte will be used Among leafy liverworts, the leaves are in the broad sense. never found on the upper side of the With over 15,000 species stem, which usually gives the plants a worldwide, the bryophytes make up a flattened appearance. The leaves can be sizeable portion of the approximately entire, lobed, ciliate or otherwise, just as 300,000 land plants estimated to be in vascular plants. Many leafy liverworts living today. There are about 1,500 can be recognized by what are known native vascular plants on Long Island, as complicate bilobed leaves in which and the bryophytes may potentially the lobes are folded onto one another. have over 400 species, bringing the land Non-leafy or thalloid liverworts have plant total to nearly 2,000. In spite of a flattened rosette or strip-like plant their relatively small size, a requirement body which is not divided into stems due to their lack of a developed and leaves. vascular system, the bryophytes play a Mosses are also divided into major role in our planet’s ecology. For subcategories. They are regarded many years the bryophytes, like the as either pleurocarpous, with stems lichens, have been used as indicators creeping or trailing and branches of environmental quality such as air numerous, or acrocarpous with upright quality (Pott & Turpin 1996; Davis et stems (sometimes inconspicuously so), al. 2001). Even more impressive is the and few to no branches. For the correct fact that there is more carbon stored in CALLIERGONELLA identification of mosses and liverworts, a single genus of moss, Sphagnum, than Courtesy of the Flora of North America Association, a proper understanding of these groups in any other genus of plants worldwide illustrator Patricia Eckel is essential. (Clymo & Hayward 1982). For over a century, the more familiar and conspicuous The three main groups of bryophytes are relatively easy vascular flora of Long Island has been well studied and to distinguish from each other based upon characters visible documented through both local floristic studies and larger with the naked eye or a hand lens. Hornworts are the least projects documenting entire families and their distributions encountered of these groups as they tend to have quite specific across the island. The study of Long Island’s bryophyte flora has habitat requirements. Our local hornworts tend to have a been much less exhaustive. While several late 19th and early 20th distinctly flattened thallus, often in irregular-shaped rosettes, century studies such as Jelliffe (1899) and Cain and Penfound usually with sporophytes present. These sporophytes, the spore (1938) included the documentation of bryophyte species, studies bearing structures, resemble an animal horn, hence their common focused solely on bryophytes are nearly non-existent for the (Continued on pg 3) PG 2 Page 2 Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 20 No. 1 Long Island Society News Botanical Society Founded: 1986 The Long Island Botanical Society was founded in 1986, and to celebrate Incorporated: 1989 our 25th Anniversary we are beginning to plan a 10-day botanical field trip to Florida in the Spring of 2011. LIBS member Ann Johnson has volunteered The Long Island Botanical Society is dedicated to serve as trip leader. We plan to start in the Florida panhandle and make to the promotion of field botany and a our way into peninsular Florida. Stay tuned for more information. greater understanding of the plants that grow wild on Long Island, New York. LIBS has joined a coalition of 33 other organizations that formed to express opposition to the sale and development of a parcel of land owned Visit the Society’s Web site by Suffolk County. The 250-acre parcel, which is within the Carmans River www.libotanical.org watershed, would be listed as surplus by the County which would then enter into a contract for the intensive development of this tract for mixed- Executive Board use development known as “Legacy Village.” President At LIBS’ annual “Members Night” on December 8, 7 members gave Eric Lamont 631-722-5542 presentations. Marion Hubbard offered a display on invasive plant species; Vice President Andy Greller shared slides of bee orchids in Greece; Peter Warny showed highlights of his trips in southeastern U.S. to Canada; Ray Welch produced Andrew Greller 516-364-9377 “The Waning of the Season” with music; Marilyn Jordan showed the Treasurer Florida panhandle spider lily (Hymenocallis choctawensis) which grows only Carol Johnston 516-676-6648 in rocky marshes, and the water primrose which has invaded the Peconic Recording Secretary River system in Forge Pond but which has been successfully weeded out by Barbara Conolly 516-922-5935 volunteers; Carol Johnston showed a few slides of grass-of-Parnassus and fringed gentian in southern Vermont, and shared her discovery of the rare Corresponding Secretary (S1) stiff gentian (Gentiana quinquefolia) in a small quarry in North Pownal, John Potente 631-361-6756 Vermont; and Rich Kelly showed some eye-catching moths in Edgewood Preserve and elsewhere. Committee Chairpersons Flora Long Island Flora Committee -- Update Gerry Moore 718-623-7332 After the untimely death of committee chair Steve Clemants in late 2008, Field Trips the Flora Committee needed to regroup and push the Long Island Flora James Mickley 717-278-9126 Atlas project towards completion. Programs To this end, the committee met on December 1st, 2009 at the Brooklyn Rich Kelly 516-354-6506 Botanic Garden (BBG). The attendees were Gerry Moore, (the new chair of the Flora Committee), Barbara Conolly, Andy Greller, Rich Kelly, Eric Membership Lamont, and Al Lindberg. The feasibility of continuing with the old Lois Lindberg 516-922-0903 process of manually placing specimen and sight record data on maps, by Conservation township/county, was discussed. Since BBG’s New York Metropolitan Bill Titus 516-671-7351 Flora (NYMF) database apparently includes Long Island flora data that Education was input by Steve before his death, Gerry suggested that LIBS could use Mary Laura Lamont 631-722-5542 the NYMF data from Long Island for its atlas. This data is by 5-kilometer map blocks, so there would be much more information on any one species Hospitality map. The numerous data points would almost approach a range map Kathleen Gaffney 516-742-4019 on Long Island. The NYMF database includes both specimen and sight Zu Proly 516-676-4023 record data. It was also discussed that a web-based atlas would be the best Dorothy Titus 516-671-7351 approach. Newsletter Editor Steve Glenn of BBG will work with LIBS to get the project off the ground. Margaret Conover 631-357-3065 A great amount of work will be needed to produce and arrange the species with special thanks to maps. It was suggested that LIBS hire a grad student to perform this work, Skip & Jane Blanchard which will be conducted at the BBG using a software site license owned by BBG. The LIBS executive board approved the expenditure of $3000, plus Webmaster travel expenses, for this work. Donald House [email protected] PG 3 Long Island Botanical Society Vol. 20 No. 1 Page 3 (Cont. from page 1) 1936a), and eastern Suffolk County (Biechele 1993), or a island, the one significant work having included the entire New focus upon vascular plants, with less emphasis upon the York City region (Grout 1916). bryophytes (Jelliffe 1899). Other studies such as Grout The last few decades have seen occasional papers on the (1916) and Ketchledge (1980), included Long Island as a subject such as Biechele’s (1993) work on the liverworts of part of a larger geographic area. Grout’s work includes the eastern Suffolk County and a statewide checklist of mosses by bryophytes of much of New Jersey, Westchester County, Ketchledge (1980) which, due to a grid system for mapping the and even the Delaware Water Gap, regions likely to have state, lumped species found in Staten Island with species from westernmost Long Island, and lumped central Long Island with portions of Westchester and Bronx Counties. Studies such as Table 1. Numbers of bryophyte taxa. these can provide a base from which to begin future studies of Reports include all or parts of Long Island. the bryophytes of Long Island, however with the narrow habitat requirements of many species, smaller-scale studies and species Source Hornworts Liverworts Mosses lists of natural areas are currently needed for a proper assessment Biechele (1993) 3 70 NA of bryophytes in our area. In the past few years several papers Cain (1936) NA 11 23 have begun to address this topic through local floras (Morgan & Cain & Penfound (1938) NA 28 48 Sperling 2005), individual species distributions (Trigoboff 2005) Grout (1916) NA NA 370 and ecological assessments (Morgan & Sperling 2007).