A community of bryophytes typical of quarry grounds

Moving closer to the darkest day of the year, certain habitats become off limits. The rivers are too high, the mountains are under snow and ice, the forest sloughs flooded. On a day like today, even the tides are prohibitively high for looking at coastal outcrops. It seems human environments get extra attention in the winter because of their ease of accessibility and the often unique assemblages of bryophytes that tend to gather is these disturbed places.

Chances are you are never far from a quarry pit where sand and gravel have been excavated for road bed, concrete, foundational materials and landscaping. In the summer, these tend to be dusty places, but in the winter in SW British Columbia, they saturate as the water table rises. The banks from which materials have been excavated can seep, as do the track margins along which the excavators excavate and the aggregate trucks haul out. The combination of mineral soils and saturation seems to promote the growth of a predictable community. What follows is an incomplete list (and subsequent images) of the taxa you might find in this region along quarry edges. I am ordering the list from Dryest to Wettest-- imagine the driest ones being on the upper lip of seasonal pooling of water, whilst the wettest ones are saturated for much of the year. Those without photos below are linked to iNat taxon pages.

Pogonatum urnigerum (dry gravels and sands)
Polytrichum juniperinum (drier gravels and sands)
Racomitrium elongatum (drier sands)
Ceratodon purpureus (finer soils, more seasonally saturated)
Philonotis fontana or Philonotis capillaris (seeping finer mineral soils)
Bryum/Gemmabryum barnesii (flat, exposed, saturated and finer mineral soils)
Pleuridium acuminatum (flat, exposed, saturated and finer mineral soils)
Tortula truncata (flat, exposed, saturated and finer mineral soils)
Riccia sorocarpa (flat, exposed, saturated and finer mineral soils)

Publicado el 13 de diciembre de 2023 a las 10:45 PM por rambryum