Tamarisk Scalewort

It was the purple colour which caught my eye, on a rock face at Shell Bay.

Close up, the branches reminded me of little slaters, with their armour plating.  Although they’re really not like that at all.

Going even closer up, this liverwort becomes quite amazing, with a very complex arrangement of leaves.

I wasn’t sure what I was looking at until Watson explained – two lateral rows of leaves, each leaf being in two parts with a large “antical” lobe and a smaller, helmet-shaped “postical” lobe.  There is also a row of bi-lobed underleaves.  These are not great pictures, but the little round blobs are the postical lobes.

Working out that this was Frullania tamarisci rather than any other kind of Frullania wasn’t easy, but eventually I spotted the line of enlarged cells crossing the antical leaf lobe.

The book says these cells are modified to contain a single large oil body.  Next question – what purpose does that have?

Overall, this is one of those bryophytes which look quite different close up from first impressions – a real journey of discovery, this one.

Found it again along near Crail, Feb 2019.