Apple moss, home

A few years ago, I had the great good fortune, at an event known as the Andrews Foray, to run into a Mainer named Ralph Pope, an amateur botanist with a pro's interest and expertise in bryology, the study of mosses and their cousins. The Foray is an annual gathering of bryologists and lichenologists, and in September 2014, it was held practically in my backyard, so I was invited along by the gathering's organizers to document it. On one field trip, I met Ralph, who was in the middle of developing a field guide that he had written, mostly photographed, and designed. While we searched the Bell Cedar Swamp refuge for mosses, he showed me color copies of the pages, and I was floored, not the least of which was because this was a proto-book that I desperately wanted to own and use. From what I could see, here was bryological salvation, a field guide that would help me actually know these challenging plants. Last month, Ralph's publisher, Comstock/Cornell University Press, was good enough to send me a review copy of Mosses, Liverworts, and Hornworts: A Field Guide to the Common Bryophytes of the Northeast, and the book quickly lived up to my recollection. In my first field test, I succeeded in identifying Bartramia pomiformis, a.k.a. Apple Moss. Praise be! One down, several hundred to go.