Identification notes
This is a conspicuous species that can be abundant in some areas (notably parts of the north and west with hard acid geology and high rainfall) and absent or rare in others e.g. dry parts of the lowlands on chalk or neutral clays.
It is one of the commonest large pleurocarps of the woodland floor in oceanic / Atlantic oakwoods (now also known as temperate rainforests) and often grows in a luxuriant-looking carpet of other large calcifugous mosses and liverworts which might include Plagiothecium undulatum, Dicranum majus, Loeskeobryum brevirostre and Bazzania trilobata. It is equally happy growing over boulders in such woodland, often in the company of Isothecium myosuroides.
It’s also commonly found out in the open in north-facing moorland and montane dwarf shrub vegetation.
Read the Field Guide account
