My first liverwort, Bazzania

In addition to lichen experts, the members of the Andrews Foray "corps of discovery" included a contingent of bryologists, students of another ubiquitous but fairly obscure group of ancient plants that include the mosses, liverworts, and hornworts. I've noted my halting attempts to learn the mosses in earlier posts, and I was very excited to be with the bryologists on a walk into the Bell Cedar Swamp because I figured that I might learn how to learn a moss or two—and absorb some of the requisite skills to go beyond thumbing through pages in a field guide and hoping enlightenment would pop off the page. I wasn't to be disappointed. In fact, among the many things I started to learn was that a plant I'd been calling a moss—the lighter green one composed of overlapping scales—was actually a liverwort called Bazzania. It's growing atop a carpet of Broom mosses in the genus Dicranum. One fundamental difference: moss leaves have a midrib; liverworts do not. It's a start in this naturalist's continuing education.