Family PELLIACEAE

Common name

RING PELLIA

Microhabitat

This thallose liverwort is most common at low elevations on inorganic soils along stream banks, swamps and lakeshores. It is often found on very moist or almost permanently wet thin acidic or neutral soils that form on rocks at the edges of streams. It prefers shaded areas among rushes or tall turfs in wet pasture or marshes. We found it on Tatlow trail in Stanley Park along the trailside on gravelly and disturbed soil by the drainage ditch.

Distribution

The genus is widespread in temperate areas of the Northern Hemisphere. The genus Pellia is distributed throughout the northern temperate region of the United States and into Canada. This species is widely distributed across most of the British Isles but scarce in much of southern and eastern England and central Ireland.

Pellia neesiana in its habitat showing pale green, ascending, rounded lobes and undulate margins
Photo Credit: Yan Zhuang

Click on thumbnails to view photos

Morphology

This thallose liverwort can be pale green, pale brownish green, or sometimes dark greyish green in colour. The thallus lobes are frequently ascending to suberect in loose or dense turfs and with few branches that are usually prostrate. The lobes are usually about 12 mm wide, but the slightly smaller male plants have 10 mm wide lobes. The lamina is usually undulate to the margins. The rhizoids are usually brown but sometimes purple. Often secondary pigments develop on thalli in exposed sites, especially along the midrib, but some times on whole surface. Pellia neesiana is dioicous and often fertile with male tubercles of about 500 um with conspicuous papillose cells surrounding the aperture. The female thalli of P. neesiana can be easily recognized by edentate involucres.

Key identifying features

Complex thallose liverworts such as Marchantia, Lunularia, and Conocephalum resemble Pellia in general size and shape, but they all have complex pore structures that cause their surfaces to have patterns like snakeskin and to look opaque green. Pellia’s surface is smooth and looks translucent. The simple thallose liverwort most similar to Pellia is Aneura, but it has no differentiated midrib and has a darker, greasy green colour. Pellia neesiana has a well-developed midrib and margins that are wavy like a ribbon. Along Tatlow trail, P. neesiana was the most common thallose liverwort, covering the banks of the drainage ditches on either side of the trail.

Interesting notes

The genus is named after L. Pelli-Fabbroni, a Florentine friend of the author of genus. The specific epithet is also named after a famous botanist, Christian Gottfried Nees von Esenbeck, who was a German botanist and entomologist in the 18th to 19th centuries.

Selected References

Lyrae, E. 2005. BC biodiversity. Available from http://www.bcbiodiversity.homestead.com/liverworts.html Cited (April 13, 2005).

Schofield, W.B. 2002. Field Guide to Liverwort Genera of Pacific North America. University of Washington Press, Seattle.

By Shawkat Ali Yousafzai

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© 2006 Department of Botany, University of British Columbia