Hypopterygium tamarisci

Something a bit different. A moss from the southern hemisphere. I saw a tweet about its presence on tree ferns in Glasgow Botanic Gardens (@AverisBen) and being along that way this weekend, had a look for myself.

It wasn’t hard to find! Most of the tree ferns were covered in it, and it’s also spread to surrounding rocks and earth.

I didn’t have time / space / handlens to look closely at it there, but was pleased to see that I captured some sporophytes in my photo.

I liked its pale green feathery delicacy.

I haven’t found out much about it apart from a few facts gleaned from Google.

Hypopterygium tamarisci is widely distributed in Africa, S and SE Asia, Australasia, Oceania, as well as South and Central America, where it extends into Mexico and the Caribbean. It is a species of mainly mountainous tropical and warm temperate areas. (1) It is a dendroid moss of wet forest with limited distribution. (2) And it can be densely gregarious or just isolated stems arising from rocks, tree ferns or tree trunks or less often logs or soil, up to 7 cm tall. (3)

I can’t even find whether it has a common name. Tree Fern Tamarisk Moss sounds like a good one to me.